


No Difference Who You Are

by crookedswingset



Series: Chasing Down A Daydream [2]
Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental overdose, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse (off-screen), Deadpool being Deadpool, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Human Experimentation, Injury, Insecure Wade Wilson, Kidnapping (off-screen), Mental Health Issues, Multi, Murder, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Relationship, Peter Parker Without Powers, Slow Burn, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Tony Stark Is In Deep Shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 13:11:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19063375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedswingset/pseuds/crookedswingset
Summary: New York was always full of surprises for Wade. But when Vanessa becomes friendly with a random college student—friendlier than he would expect from his usually prickly bae—Wade finds himself staring down the unexpected possibility that Wade+Nessa=5ever might not be as set in stone as he thought.He would never stand in the way of Vanessa’s happiness. Never. He loved her too much.But goddamn did he hate Peter Parker.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the wait, y'all. Decided to take a break after Off The Record. 
> 
> Heed the warnings. DP straight up murders a person (and a Katy Perry song) in the very first chapter. Tags will be updated periodically.

The cold metal bit into Wade’s back. Above him, smog and light pollution choked out the stars, turning the night sky into a soupy gray. The air was frigid. It smelled like old fish and back alley urine. Not exactly the gentle perfume you’d like to use to introduce a story, right? But no amount of Daffodil Daydream air fresheners could make a dock smell any less like a dock.

Hm. New stories. Docks. He was on the wrong side of the Hudson, but _something_ about this setup tickled the old brain cells.

Wade’s leg hitched a little where it was crossed over one knee. Then he framed the half-hidden moon between both hands.

Time to ASMR this shit.

“New Jersey. Midnight. Cut to a suspiciously empty setting. It’s dark, spooky. The lights have been shot out by unknown villains. There are cargo containers as far as the eye can see. But wait!” Wade deepened his voice. “Lo, a hero approaches, evil drawing out _not_ a dashing, devilish deviant—thank you—but rather another alliteration ally! But for whom does the bell of justice toll? Why, none other than some nefarious nincompoops neglecting necessary- uh. Hm. What’s another n-word?" Nothing came to mind. Wade cracked his head back, groaning at himself. "Jesus Christ, this is why we _always_ lose at fucking Scrabble-”

“Who the _fuck_ is talking?”

Having been proven a liar, Wade paused in his monologue, considering the not so suspiciously empty docks around him. Then, tentatively, he whispered, “God?”

Well, fuck. If Wade was right, God was a sweaty, middle-aged man with a neckbeard—and God was fucking _pissed_.

A meaty hand jerked him off the top of the cargo container. (Try and clean your brain of _that_ mental image.) Giggling, Wade hit the ground at an awkward angle, his sheaths jabbing mercilessly in his spine. Then he looked between his knees at his foe, suddenly registering the very boring New Jersey accent.

“Wait, what? You’re not _Russian_. Way to totally ruin my pop culture reference, ya fuck.” Grunting slightly, Wade got to his feet, gripping the small of his back like an old man. Wade whined when he hit a sore spot and tried to rub it out.

Heh. More dick jokes.

By the time he swung back to Neckbeard, the dastardly deviant dumbass had gathered a whole posse of sweaty noob criminals. Did Buckteeth over there _really_ have a chain wrapped around his first?

Wade nodded at his makeshift weapon. “Baby’s first gang beat down?” Wade asked warmly. “Yeah, that’s not how you want to pop your cherry, trust me.” Buckteeth just gripped the chains harder, his namesake clenched.

“You’re Deadpool,” Neckbeard called out, trying to regain control of the situation. He was armed with a gun, but that spicy number in black was pointed down at the ground for now. Mis _take_. “What does Deadpool want with the Russians?”

“Not the Russians, _the_ Russian,” Buckteeth countered, snarling. “The giant metal mutant _fuck_.”

Wade paused, cocking his head to the right. Colossus was in New Jersey? “That’s… not the reference I was going for. Nope.” His mind spun off, fabricating one hundred and one reasons why his reluctant bestie from another nestie would been released into the wild. Last time they spoke, Colossus was supposed to be taking a break from fieldwork, unless... Wade had fucked up again, somehow? Oh, _boo_. Wade didn’t need him breaking his semi-vacation to babysit Deadpool!

Everything he did nowadays was legit. Above board. Government sanctioned! Still hella murder-y though.

Well. File that nugget away in the Tomorrow Problems folder… Anyhoo.

“Not looking for him, buddy. Not yet, anyway.” Back pain miraculously gone, Wade skipped forward a step, clasping his hands behind him. He nudged an empty beer can with his toe. “Actually, I was hoping for a ruffled Charlie Cox to wander in like an avenging angel with daddy issues. You’ve seen him?”

“Who the fuck are you talking about?” Buckteeth snarled, rattling his finger breakers.

Wade gasped. “Do you not even know? They’ve all been canceled!” He jabbed a finger in their direction. “That means you’re _next_ , buddy!” After a beat, his shoulders loosened into a shrug, his hands swinging down. “Well, I’m overstating. Netflix doesn’t know you, pal. You’re an unnamed OC I’m gonna pummel in a few seconds to hammer home how _violent_ and _saucy_ I am-”

Without further ado, Wade buried one of his steel-toed shoes straight into Neckbeard’s groin. What’s that about poor sportsmanship? Oh, go lick an ashtray. Nope, this baddie was fixing to aim a modded snub nose shotgun up and at the main protagonist of this story—and super healing didn’t mean that shit didn’t _hurt_.

Wheezing hilariously, Neckbeard hit the floor, the gun clattering next to him. He stared up at Deadpool with absolute horror, like he’d accidentally taken a sneak panty shot of Cthulhu. Wade walked past him. “Serves you right. Consent, motherfucker.”

Eager beaver Buckteeth rushed forward to claim the first open spot on Wade’s dance card. Wade spun away, letting him break his own fingers on the pillar just to the left of Wade; after all, he'd been warned. When the idiot screamed, hand predictably mangled, Wade grasped the back of his neck and slammed his face against the same block of concrete. Then he did it again. And again. And again one more time for good luck. Then he paused, admiring his handiwork.

Dazed, the lesser baddie spat out blood and teeth, barely conscious. Wade let him go, sidestepping the man as he collapsed to the floor. Absently, Wade reached for a katana, looking up at the last two frozen idiots.

Jerking out of their paralysis, they quickly disarmed themselves, tossing metal pipes, knives, and a single handgun to the ground. They backed off quickly, hands up in a universal gesture of peace. Then, when Wade didn’t immediately kill them, they turned around and ran for their cars, leaving an inch of rubber behind them as they peeled out of the docks.

Smart! Also, efficient and timely. Economical. You go, villains!

Just not too far.

Humming some Katy Perry, Wade stopped reaching for Bea and instead started to skip along the row cargo containers. In the background, Neckbeard and Buckteeth crawled towards each other—aw, cute. Villain bromance! Wade left them to it. 

“Now what oh what are we trafficking here, fellas?” he called out cheerfully. He pirouetted around an empty barrel, peeking into it briefly. “Drugs? TVs? Director’s cut of _Once Upon A Deadpool_ , available on Blu-ray and DVD?” SHIELD hadn't shared that tidbit in their briefing.

Wade bent over and picked up the lone handgun on the floor. Aiming carefully, he shot off every lock to every container near Neckbeard’s set up. The gun jammed after the final lock was destroyed. Looking down the barrel briefly, Wade shrugged and tossed it over his shoulder, reaching for the double doors of the closest receptacle of transported goods.

“ _I got the eye of a tiger-_ ugh.” The first one was empty.

“ _The eye of a tiger, a fighter, walking_ … no. Dancing?” The second one was full of ATVs and motorbikes—boring! “Dancing.”

“ _Dancing through the fire_ —whoa ho, party over here!” The third one had a rickety desk and a pile of coke big enough to make Scarface _super_ jelly.

After that, the fourth container was totally boring, full of slightly dented cars from three years ago. Coke aside, it was enough made Wade think that maybe he’d been pointed at green traffickers after all. Baby baddies! What the fuck? That didn’t seem _fair_ , giving them the full Deadpool treatment so early in their career. They should have gotten the chance to cut their teeth in something before Wade straight up broke them.

Muttering crap under his breath about SHIELD, Wade headed over to the last container. “ _Cuz I’m a champion, and you’re gonna hear me-_ ” Wade flung open the fifth container. He froze in place. “…fuck. Hey.”

The smell of human waste was strong. And yet, there was a clear attempt at cleanliness and order in the horrid little space. Trash was carefully collected in the furthest corner near a single dismal bucket. Closer to where Wade crouched was a neat row of granola bars boxes and sealed water bottles. Closer still was a pile of dirty rags and fabrics, making up a sad little bed.

And on the bedding, there were two girls and one boy.

It was almost pitch black, and the children blinked harshly, like even the dim night light Wade had brought in was too much for their eyes. Once their peepers had adjusted, the children had stared at him suspiciously, fearfully.

“Hey,” he said again, softer, crouching.

They looked alike, despite their age ranges. Noses, chins, faces, skin tone—it screamed shared genetics. Their skin was pale under the dirt, and that dirty hair was still clearly various shades of blond. Their eyes were as dark as Vanessa’s. The oldest one had the other two clamped to her tightly, like Wade was going to rip them away from her at any moment. Despite the determination clear in her grip, her eyes were deadened, resigned. The only thing bright about her ragged appearance was a glint of gold at her throat—a Mockingjay necklace.

There was a long pause. A stalemate. A fucking old West standoff between three traumatized children and an equally traumatized adult.

Then-

“Pidermn?” the toddler whispered through the fingers in his mouth. He gazed up at Deadpool, visibly confused.

“That’s not Spider-Man,” snapped the youngest girl, eyes narrowing angrily. She couldn’t have been more than 10, but she looked half-feral, ready to fight. The teenager behind her hauled the little firecracker closer, but she herself said nothing. Instead, she buried her face in the toddler’s oily mess of hair.

Right. This required a slightly different approach. There wasn’t an adultier adult to hide behind for this—fuck!

“You’re right, kiddo! I’m not Spider-Man, but I’m, like, his mentor or something. He idolizes me. Copied my costume and everything.”

Predictably, this extravagant set of lies went over like a lead balloon. The little girl squinted at him darkly, and the little toddler clearly wasn’t comforted. The teen buried her face deeper, her thin shoulders lifting to her ears.

“You look s-s-scary.” There was a dangerous wobble to the boy’s lower lip. His big eyes got even bigger—shit. The youngest girl scowled deeper, her eyes shiny in the low light, and the teenager behind them trembled, readjusting her grip on them.

Wade scrambled for something to say. “I know the mask is scary, but what’s underneath it is worse, trust me. Not- not that there’s a monster here or anything! I… just don’t look… great.” He dropped his head, clenching his fist by his knee.

God. _Kids._ He couldn’t work with kids. His luck with Russell was more of a reflection of _Russell_ than any skill or empathy on Wade’s part. Like most teenagers, Russell was just plain oblivious. Totally self-absorbed and overly confident, that little bastard. He hadn’t _ever_ looked at Wade as a threat. No, Wade was just an X-Man trainee assclown. Then a friend. Then a rival. Then back to being a friend again. Wade was never, ever someone he feared.

Well, what did other adults do to get children to trust them?

Ah. Shit. Wade looked up at the murky sky, sighing. _So_ regretting this train of thought. Resigned, Wade nevertheless started fumbling at his pouches.

“Hey, kids," he said dully, "want some candy?” One minute, it was like Wade had the plague. The next, it was like Wade was leaking gold—that was how quick the kids shoved their reservations aside. So. Fucking. _Easy._ “Jesus Christ, it’s like you kids never heard of stranger danger. I don’t care if the man in the van has candy and puppies in the backseat—you walk _away_ , children.”

All he had mints and a couple of pieces of gum in his pockets, but he unloaded all of his haul on the youths. Everything he pulled out of his belt disappeared in a blink. And yet—  

“This is old man candy,” the little girl accused, glaring up at him. Next to her, the toddler chewed on his mint like a zen baby Buddha, chubby cheeks and all.

“Ah ah ah. Werther’s Originals are old men candies. Get on my level.” Swiping the mints from the little man, Wade shook the tin at the girl. “No, these are candies of someone who would like to get _kissed_ sometime in the near future. Understand?”

She understood a little too well; there was a scary level of interest on the preteen’s face. She clapped a hand over the container, ripping it from Wade’s fingers before he could react. Then she tipped back her head, dumping the whole thing in her mouth.

“Hey!” Wade complained. The demon child started coughing immediately as the sudden influx of mint overwhelmed her little taste buds. “Let that be a lesson to you, missie! No dating until after you’re married.” She flipped him off, still hacking up the mints.

“Shitty old man,” she snarled, coughing.

“Shitty preteen twerp,” Wade fired back, delighted. She grumbled, crossing her arms. Next to her, the toddler, not understanding but amused all the same, let out one sharp but joyous laugh, like he couldn't help it.

Pleased by the visible change in trust levels, he turned his attention to the guilty looking teenager, the only one of the three who should have really known better than to trust a stranger with candy.

“Little known fact, but, uh, it’s against my religion to ask an older child to be an adult so the younger kids don’t have to. But something tells me you’re already doing it.”

The teen looked back at him with tired eyes. She’d scooted after her siblings dutifully, even swiping some candy for herself, but where the other two were practically crawling into Wade’s lap, she stayed out of arm’s reach of Wade, indecision scrunching up her face. She white-knuckled the ends of her skirt, her mouth saying nothing, but her eyes saying everything.

She may have taken a treat like the other two, but there would be no trust while Wade stayed so close to her brother and sister.

Nodding, Wade stood and jerked his head away from the container. After a beat, the teen rose unsteadily, following his retreat with small, hesitant footsteps. The other two didn’t even make a break for it.

Wade really, really didn’t like what that told him.

He stopped a little ways away from the container, still in line of sight, and waited for the teen. She approached slowly, arms crossed over her chest. She looked both ways. Then she looked behind her at her siblings.

“Do you want to tell me why you three are in a cargo container, Katniss? Spirited game of hide and go seek gone wrong?” Wade tapped his ear. “You can tell me.”

Katniss gazed up at him. She was tiny. Well, no. She was tall, actually, very tall for a girl of her age. But she was also thin like some kids got sometimes, like her weight was duking it out with her height, and her height was winning. She looked all of 90 pounds, soaking wet. She was probably about 14, but she seemed so much younger than his foul-mouthed little buddy Firefist when he was arrested and thrown into mutant jail.

But she walked up to him still, brave girl, one step at a time. She got up on her bare tiptoes and whispered to him in a soft voice.

Wade stilled. He watched her as she dropped back down to her heels, her mouth pressing flat anxiously, big eyes staring into his mask.

Wade let out a low, steady breath. The thing about kids like Russell and Katniss, well… you could always tell.

A long moment later, glass crashed to the floor. The sound of familiar male voices registered with them both. Katniss flinched, shrinking. Wade shook his head once, slowly. He looked behind him, tracking the muffled swearing and insults of his recovering prey.

He made a decision. “Oookay,” he breathed. He gestured to the container. Katniss seemed to understand the necessity of it, even if Wade didn’t like it, didn’t like ushering her to her cage.

Katniss ran on light feet and quickly hustled her siblings back to their bedding. After a beat, Wade followed her in.

“So, kids,” Wade said in a bright voice, “I’m gonna teach you a little bit about music.” He took out his Walkman, testing the batteries.

“Is this an old iPod?” asked the demon child, curious now. “It’s so big.”

Ugh. Children. So much pain and suffering right now. Annoyed, Wade muttered to himself, “ _This_ was the generation who got a smartphone by the time they were 3, right? A lot of help that was in this situation-” Katniss cleared her throat. Wade changed his tune. “Anyhoo, big sis and I checked, and you can’t leave your container yet. It’s, um, unsafe. You name a gross and/or messy thing? It’s out there. Feces, vomit, broken glass, my shattered hopes and dreams… It looks like Steven Tyler’s tour bus after a coke binge—do you guys even know who Aerosmith is? Ugh, forget it. I’ll do you one better with some Queen.” Wade turned up his Walkman to eleven and passed to the demon child. “Give me a few minutes to clean up, okay?”

The demon child didn’t seem to know how to respond to the sound of Earth’s one and only angel troubadour. She just stared at the Walkman, fixated by the music. Wade kept unloading his pockets, handing off a pair of emergency glow sticks to the little dude. Like his sister, he froze at the offering, but when Wade leaned over, obligingly cracking both sticks for the kiddo, he lit up like sunshine, whipping the sticks around like he was at a baby rave.

But in the teen’s hands, he pushed a flashlight and a very big knife. Just in case. Katniss looked up at him, petrified. “Trust me.” He closed her fingers around both items and tried to channel someone far more responsible than Wade Winston Wilson.  

She seemed to buy it. A moment later, he gently closed the door to the cargo container behind him.

Thirty feet away, the baddies were rallying. Buckteeth—minus the teeth—was swearing his charming head off. He was hurling things in the back of a cargo van like a mad man, spitting and tripping over himself the whole time. Silent for once, Wade perched on the top of the same van like a certain dead, arachnid-themed superhero, looming over him. When Neckbeard came running up, huffing and puffing and hauling a huge duffle bag full of weapons, he immediately saw Wade, but he couldn’t catch enough air to yell out a warning to his bro.

And so, unimpeded, Wade dropped on Buckteeth like a bag of bricks from above—his kind of hero landing.

It was barely a tussle. Wade had Buck on his stomach almost immediately, and he yanked Buck’s head back, sliding a knife close to his neck.

“So,” Wade said conversationally. “Your boss fired you. And instead of review bombing his business on Yelp like a normal person, you took his kids?”

“Wait! Wait, wait-” Neckbeard wheezed, tripping forward on his hands and knees. He reached out, freezing in place under Wade’s glare—good boy. “We got a good offer for them. We can cut you in!" Wade stared at him wordlessly, forcing Neckbeard to explain. "The baby has a mutation. Chances are, the others do too. W-we-we can unload ‘em, and everyone will be half a million richer!”

Wade kept his blade on Buckteeth’s throat. The baddie under him swallowed shallowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. After a long moment, Wade tilted his head consideringly. “…Half a million.”

“ _At least_ ,” Neckbeard stressed. A thick line of sweat made its way down his cheek.

“Half a _million_ ,” Wade breathed out again, this time with awe. He settled back on his haunches, relaxing his grip on Buck’s head. “Well, why didn’t you say something? Ha! This conversation would have gone so differently.” Wade laughed again, loud and free, the docks echoing with it. “Half a million!”

Neckbeard laughed too, though not as freely. “At least, yeah.” Then he pressed his advantage, eyes feverish and bright. “You know, guy, you’re tough a-a-and _infamous_. With your help, maybe we could get a lot more. That was just the first offer we got. But I heard there’s a whole big market for them out there-”

“Is there really?” Wade gushed girlishly. “Tell me more.”

Eager, Neckbeard crawled a little closer, just within arm’s reach. “You see, there’s a-”

“You _fucking_ moron,” Buckteeth hissed, ruining Wade’s fun. “ _He’s_ a goddamn mutant.”

“Oh, I sure am,” Wade purred, yanking his knife to back to him until it hit bone.

Then he stood, releasing the dying man. He casually towered above the lingering bad guy, and he couldn’t find it in him to feel an ounce of guilt over the emotions that flickered over Neckbeard’s face—shock, fear, grief, despair. After all, Neckbeard certainly hadn’t felt bad about terrorizing those kids.

Wade tipped Neckbeard’s face up with the tip of the knife that killed his friend. Then he smiled horribly. “You know my name, but you don’t know my backstory, bud? That’s hurtful.” Wade shrugged. “Well. In your defense, canon is a hot fucking mess. Mutant, mutate, some rando with a gun—who knows? And some canons, see, they don’t give a shit about the difference. And neither do you.” He clapped a hard, bruising hand over Neckbeard’s shoulder. “Let’s chat some more about that mutie market, big boy.”

Neckbeard had quite the set of lungs on him, but in the background, Queen blared on uninterrupted.

We are the champions, indeed.

 

-

 

The white glow from the fridge cut through the darkness of the room, shifting restlessly around the dark silhouette of the intruder. A massive, unexpected, and undeniably broad-shouldered form had wedged itself between the double doors. Glass clicked together noisily as the robbery continued.

There were weirder things than stumbling on a Norse god in your kitchen. Probably.

“You are a literal king,” Tony said finally, exasperated. He flipped on the light switch, transforming the scene. “Why are you raiding my fridge?”

Blinking in the sudden light, Thor didn’t apologize. He just finished grabbed his haul, unloading it on the island counter between them. “I’m to take a long journey. I do not wish to become famished along the way.” Despite this nonchalant thievery, Thor was watching him, like he was waiting for Tony to rescind his longstanding invitation to barge in whenever he liked. When Tony just stared at him, Thor slurped up the rest of Pepper’s chow mein noisily.

Ah. The ever-continuing ripple effects of the great Avengers divide.

Thor had wisely kept his mouth shut about his thoughts on who was the bigger idiot when it came to the Sokovia Accords. But those were just words. Thor had always been a man—well, a god—of action. Anyone with eyes and half a brain could tell he’d settled on Team Cap.

It was—and continued to be—an absolute mess. Tony had been fighting a battle for accountability and transparency, a war of ideals. Steve had looked beyond that, seeing dictators and corrupted officials salivating at the thought of leashing some of the most powerful people in the world. Any snowball’s chance Tony had to sway Steve over to his side was lost the second Bucky Barnes became a pawn piece.

There was _no way_ Thor wouldn’t be sympathetic to all that. Beyond Thor’s discoveries about Asgard’s not so glorious past, they’d all found out much too late that Loki had been a pawn too in those early days, a wild shade of himself corrupted by the power of an infinity stone.

And yet, in the end, Tony couldn’t bring himself to be upset that Steve claimed another child in the divorce. Not when Thor used it as an excuse to hastily set up a non-extradition treaty, claiming Steve as a citizen of New Asgard in the same breath.

“Must be some trip.” Shaking the cobwebs from his brain, Tony went to the coffee machine.

Thor didn’t disagree. He didn’t leave Earth much these days. It was too hard. Carol’s Skrull contacts may have been the ones to pinpoint Thanos, but Stormbreaker was how they delivered a bunch of angry Avengers—both new and old—to Thanos’ doorstep. But by the time the battle concluded, Stormbreaker was badly broken. The exhausted and wounded team spent two weeks on the planet Thanos died on before Carol and Thor’s Valkyrie friend came back with a Kree ship to take them all home.

In the years since, Stormbreaker had been pieced together enough that Thor could finally reopen the Bifrost and take small jumps, but the big guy was leery about exercising this power. Something about how it was like skydiving into a tornado while holding dust in your bare hands.

“I have been summoned,” Thor revealed, digging deeper in his pilfered Styrofoam container.

“Who summons Thor?” Tony said with faux outrage, spinning around to meet Thor at the counter with his coffee.

Thor snorted. Then he looked up with a half-smile. “A friend.” 

“Oh. Well. Good,” Tony said awkwardly. Tony didn’t know Thor had friends anymore outside of Earth.

A long moment passed. Then another. Hunched over the counter, Thor slurped up more noodles, eyeing him steadily, reminding Tony that, of the two of them, Thor was the one with all the time in the world.

Tony broke first. “Speaking of which, how’s our mutual friend?” He paused, then said quickly, “Subtlety isn’t always your thing, but try to remember the game here is _plausible deniability_ -”

“If you wanted plausible deniability,” Thor countered critically, “you wouldn’t ask about our mutual friend.”

Oof. Someone was testy.

“Come on, Thor,” Tony said, pleading. When Thor just raised his eyebrows, Tony sighed. “Ever since we ganked Thanos, and he-” Tony’s chest tightened. Oh. This was going to be hard, wasn’t it? “Ever since Rogers-” _No._ Tony took in a shuddering breath. “Look. Ever since we got back… I haven’t seen Cap in person. You know this.”

“My _personal_ invitation to you to visit New Asgard had not been rescinded,” Thor said with weird, rigid formality. “You are still more than welcome.”

“And I still _can’t_ ,” Tony said, regretful. “I have eyes on me. You know that too.”

Thor looked pained. Something in that exchange had flown the distance between the two of them and struck home with cruel accuracy. Tony didn’t celebrate it. He couldn’t. So he watched as Thor set aside his takeout suddenly, folding his thick arms over the edge of the counter.  

When they finally came, Thor’s words were gentle. “Is that why you do not sleep?”

Tony snorted, throwing Thor a flat glare. “My insomnia predates Steven Grant Rogers putting on the Infinity Gauntlet to save the universe, thank you very much.”

Thor grinned at that, teeth sharp. He stood up straight then, towering over Tony. “My friend…” Thor’s voice was fond and a little irritated but so thoroughly genuine. Tony felt like Thor had punched him in the gut. Then some of the amusement filtered out of Thor’s gaze. “Would you rather I gave you the truth or the politician’s reply?”

Dread made his coffee taste like ash. He fiddled with his cup, stalling. He’d had a feeling Thor came here to share an update. After all, Thor could have accessed the Bifrost anywhere. Instead, he chose to do it in here, in what was almost enemy territory for him… just for the chance to talk to Tony. “I’ve had enough of politicians, big guy. Lay it on me.”

Thor’s responding smile was dimmer, but it still reached his intact blue eye. The other eye, still missing, still covered by a shiny metal patch, crinkled around the edges. Thor looked rough. His cheeks were hollow, like he hadn’t been eating much lately. It was a slight physical change he could have gotten away with, had he not kept his beard and hair as short as it was the day he came back to Earth to revisit the Asgardian response to Thanos’ aggression.

“The decay no longer spreads. Our people managed to contain it. He says he can move it still, but he feels nothing.” There was a bleak steadiness to Thor’s words. “His arm is… gray. And grayer every day. It bears no warmth. When it is cut, it does not bleed. It is… quite unlike anything we have ever seen.” Thor looked away then, expression clouded. “Had we still had Asgard, we could have done more. Perhaps even cured him. But as it is, as we are—refugees, remnants, unwanted guests on Midgard—this is as much as we can do.”

Tony liked to think that, where there was life, there was hope. But there was nothing to say to that gloomy sentence. Nodding wordlessly, Tony gulped down his coffee in silence. On the other side of the counter, Thor seemed like he’d lost his appetite.

Eventually, Tony followed Thor out of the kitchen. They walked to the central courtyard of the Avengers Compound, Thor seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

Tony looked up, squinting up at the faint belt of stars above them. “…Thank you.”

“For raiding your fridge?” Thor inquired warmly.

“No. For harboring a fugitive,” Tony said abruptly, so abruptly that it probably came across as sarcastic. Wincing, Tony shot an apolgetic look at his friend. “I know you’re feeling guilty, Thor, but what you guys were able to do… it’s the best-case scenario. If Cap came home, he wouldn’t have gotten health care. He would have gotten a jail cell. They would have tucked him somewhere dark and deep, and no one would have seen neither hide nor hair of Captain America ever again.”

Thor stared at him for a long moment. His mouth opened, like he was about to say something, but then Tony’s hand shot up to the side of his head. His earpiece clicked a four-note warning—something was rapidly approaching the compound. If he strained, he could just barely hear the squeal of tires in the distance. And if he could barely hear it, then Thor definitely could.

Sure enough, Thor was tracking it, staring intently at something on the other side of the compound. Armed as he was, Thor looked lost for a second, like a child left behind in a mall.

Tony stuck his hands in his pockets.  “Goodbye, Thor,” he said pointedly.

Thor finally dragged his gaze away from the interlopers, dropping his focus back down on Tony himself. Tony expected the regret and sadness; Thor was a genuinely good guy. Leaving people to deal with consequences alone wasn't in his nature. But what he didn’t expect that look of sudden wildness, like Thor was sorely tempted to grab Tony and take him on an intergalactic adventure.

Tony kept his hands in his pockets and stared him down. He had made his preference clear years ago.

Gravely, Thor nodded once, whipping Stormbreaker behind him. All around him, the Bifrost opened up in an obvious show. Whatever power it was—science, magic, mystery—it lit his friend up with beautiful, iridescent light.

And then Thor was gone, only a stamp on the ground left as evidence.

And Tony was being surrounded by government agents. Barely registering the jingle of bullets and suited up humans, Tony stared up at the sky. After a moment, he looked down, eyes jumping from blank face to blank face, trying to find a friendly one. A useless effort. After all, these men were under Ross, and Ross existed for little else these days than to rain on Tony’s parade.

“Stark-” one of them barked. Special Agent Something or Other—whatever. Tony had stopped pairing the names to the faces.

“Yeah, I got the drill.” His indifference translated itself in a casual shrug—the slightest of shoulder twitches, really. But that twitch fluttered through the group, and Tony suddenly found himself under the focus of way too many guns. Tony paused, amazed at how a bunch of highly trained agents could look at his bare feet, oil stained clothes, and bloodshot eyes, and still see a threat.

Maybe amazed wasn’t the right word for it.

Heart pounding, Tony very carefully took his hands out of his pockets. “Lead the way, gentlemen.”

“You will debrief General Ross at once,” said Special Agent What's His Face.

“Yeah, yeah.” Tony didn’t need the reminder that he was just a rat in a cage.

 

-

 

“What the hell, Parker! He was going to grade on a curve.”

The hallway was crowded. But the shout still echoed. College students of all ages and sizes glanced from face to face, looking for the elusive Peter Benjamin Parker—but only for a moment. Eyes slipped past him easily. Most of Peter’s classes were big enough to ensure anonymity, and his last presentation in either of his majors was in freshman year. He hadn’t had to pair up with another person in lab for almost 22 months, which was a combination of extreme luck, surprisingly biddable teachers, and a long series of independent study courses to flesh out his credits.

The result? No one jumped to out him to his angry classmate. Not a single person.

And yet, Peter still froze, phone clutched to his chest. He closed his eyes briefly, ears burning. Then, taking a deep breath, he pushed forward, making his way where the crowd was clustered the tightest in that cramped hallway.

His professor, Dr. Wakefield, was an ancient guy, pushing 90 with a mind like a steel trap. Peter had only had the pleasure of doing so twice but stepping into his office was like time traveling to the past fifty years. He tended to reference things that happened back in the eighties like it was yesterday, and he still used plastic sheets, Expo markers, and a dingy, beat up overhead projector for his lectures. Even scantrons were too modern for him. Instead, he had them write everything out on blank pieces of paper, and he graded them step by excruciating step.

And he absolutely _hated_ Empire State University’s online classroom environment. Instead of posting grades on the platform, he printed out grade rankings and taped them to the wall outside his classroom, a clear violation of several ESU academic confidentiality rules. Wakefield shrugged off the criticism like water off a duck’s back, and the rule breaking continued. Peter wished he had half of Wakefield’s stubborn confidence.

As it was, he didn’t. He was just Peter. Just another college student hovering in a random hallway, trying to figure out his score on the last exam of his course.

Fortunately for him, the crowd was mobile, constantly shifting as students came, found their grade, and left. Only his angry classmate stood still, looming at the wall with an expression that was more despair than genuine rage.

Peter took a minute to observe him. His classmate was blond, tall, and broadly built. Handsome too. He stood with a wide stance, a concrete pillar in a sea of moving bodies. Peter knew from watching him in class the last two terms that he was both gregarious and flirty, but nothing of that warmth was visible now. Instead, he looked grumpy and unapproachable.

So, naturally, Peter approached him. “Was it all you ever hoped for?”

“It’s an advanced physics class, not a date with a wishing well.” His classmate stood even taller, chest pushing out. “I’d have better luck with the well.”

Ah. There was the cocky guy Peter remembered. Barely. What was his name again?

“I bet you would.” Peter stood shoulder to shoulder with the guy, who still hadn’t bothered to look over. He found his name up at the very top: 97% on their cumulative final. Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he dropped his eyes to the next highest grade—63%. He winced. Ouch. No wonder his classmate was pissed.

“Man, it took me an hour longer than everyone else to do the damn test… and now this?” The other man shifted his weight finally, covering his mouth with his hand. “Can you believe this guy?”

“Yeah, Parker’s a total asshole,” Peter commented dryly.

His classmate snorted. “Amen, brother.” Without looking, he lifted a fist to Peter. After a beat, Peter awkwardly bumped it with his own.

As if the touch activated him, his classmate turned towards him, blue eyes dropping down to Peter’s face, mouth opening to say something else-

But Peter was already turning into the crowd, disappearing into it.

He wasn’t here to make friends.

 

-

 

Like most bars and night scenes, Adore was a strange place in the afternoon. There was a hint of _unreality_ to it, like the strip club had no right to even exist at 1pm. And yet, there it was—slightly dim with fewer fluorescent bulbs than Vanessa expected.

Adore was smaller than some of the other strip clubs she’d worked at over the years. Where the place wasn’t black, it was done up in warm reds, subtle purples, and elegant golds. There were two elevated stages with twin poles on the left and right of the club. Chairs were clustered around small, circular tables between the stages themselves. The bar was set up in the back, bold and eye-catching with warm gold lighting set under the glass fixtures. She couldn’t see it, but there was also a full kitchen there too. According to their website, Adore served some of the best sliders in town.

But she was the very opposite of hungry. Swallowing, Vanessa looked around some more, hands twisting on the strap of her bag. The place was almost empty. A twenty-something-year-old woman had homework spread out over three tables. She was wearing jeans and a loose fitting Linkin Park shirt, and she ignored Vanessa completely, chewing on the end of her pencil fitfully. No way in hell that was the owner. Vanessa kept looking.

Soft music moved through the air, but there were no customers. Unlike some strip clubs, Adore didn’t entertain daytime visitors.

“Over here.”

The call came from the bar. There was a woman moving around just behind it. Even as Vanessa approached her, she didn’t stop what she was doing, drying a cup idly before flipping it upside down at the counter. She watched Vanessa the entire time, sizing her up. Then, after a beat, the woman crooked a finger at her and walked off, leading Vanessa to a slightly sticky table.

Vanessa knew who she was before the formal introduction: Maria Solas. Owner. Manager. Resident hard ass. She had a reputation. And, in person, she was living up to it perfectly.

Maria gave the impression of being immediately unimpressed with the world in general—and Vanessa in particular. She had dark hair, darker eyes, and a perpetually flat expression on her tan face. She was in her mid-forties, and she was very fit. A scar too jagged to be from a knife bisected her right eyebrow, and Vanessa couldn’t help but wonder what bar fight she’d gotten it from. She didn’t seem like the type to hang back and wait for the cops. She seemed like the type to wade in and crack the heads of the two idiots together.

Maria was normally the kind of woman Vanessa admired. But only from a distance.

They exchanged stilted greetings, eyeing each other closely as they traded the usual work questions. Vanessa didn’t bother with kiss ass responses. She stuck to the facts. Either her experience was enough or it wasn’t. The job opening specified that whoever filled it needed to be flexible and willing to jump in wherever needed. Vanessa could do that. She’d been everything from bartender to waitress to _the talent_ in this kind of scene—and then some. She was the very definition of flexible.

But Maria wasn’t taking any notes, so Vanessa didn’t know how serious she was taking this. Vanessa had a bad feeling that Maria had already made her mind up. But in which way?

“I called your references,” Maria said eventually.

Ah. “And?” Vanessa’s references were a little dated, but she did have a few good ones from Boston. Even Weasel said he’d pitch in. St. Margaret’s wasn’t a strip club, but Weasel would give her a recommendation anyway. She used to bartend for him when money was tight, like it always was that year Wade disappeared.

“I also called around town about you. Tried to figure out the gaps in your work history.” Vanessa’s fingers twitched. There was a reason she didn’t include some things in her resume. Maria gazed at her steadily. “Is it true you beat up your last boss so bad, you broke his nose?”

And his cheekbone, his pride, and possibly his ability to bear children. She hoped. “The owner had a habit of assuming that he was entitled to the merchandise.”

Finally, a faint smirk appeared on Maria’s face. “That fits with what I’ve heard about him.” Too quickly, the smirk faded. Maria leaned back, hooking her arm over the back of the seat. She stared at Vanessa for a little while longer, clearly thinking. Then she nodded. “I like you. So here’s how it goes. I don’t tolerate shit. You have side jobs? They don’t happen in the club. Same with shitty habits. If you drink, if you do drugs on the clock, you’re out. You bring any of that shit in, you’re out. I know a lot of the girls here have issues, multiple jobs, personal drama, what have you… but while you’re on _my_ payroll and on _my_ time, you keep that shit out of Adore.”

For a moment, Vanessa was speechless—and not over the list of rules. It wasn’t unusual for an owner to have stipulations. Most of her former workplaces charged the dancers the right to work the pole. Some of them required full nudity all the time. Others enforced minimum distances between a dancer and a customer. Still others were as lax as shit about that sort of thing or, worse, as criminal as hell. Even at St. Margaret’s, you could do anything up to and including murder. Weasel rarely paid attention to what was going on. As long as the bodies and the evidence was gone by 4:00am, he didn’t give a shit and he didn’t take a cut.

Weirdly, though, his was one of the better places—the mercs, for better or worse, policed each other. But some of her other workplaces set up restricted areas for illegal activities, demanded a cut, and denied any oversight or liability.

Adore seemed practically heavenly in comparison. Vanessa slowly relaxed, muscle groups unclenching one by one.

Maria pulled out her phone, typing something in. “You got any affiliations with the families, gangs, or other organizations in the city?”

“Why?” Vanessa asked. “Do I need one?”

“New York’s a city of endless networking,” Maria replied dryly. “It’s hard to find people not affiliated with someone or something here.” She looked up from her phone suddenly, expression dark. “Anyone HYDRA is a hard fucking no.”

“No HYDRA, thank you.” Vanessa was under the impression that HYDRA was supposed to be gone, but what did she know? “But I do know someone who works with the X-Men occasionally. Is that going to a problem?”

Maria just waved her hand dismissively. “Whatever. Like I'm gonna get my panties in a twist with those goodie two shoes... Anyway, barring any hidden character defects, you’re hired. We’re shorthanded, and you’re not new to this.” She pushed herself out of the seat, rolling her shoulder. “Figure out your own routine on your own time. Use of the club before or after hours is encouraged. No house fee, you’re hourly. I’ll have some forms for you to fill out.”

Vanessa stood too. “Anything else?”

Maria eyed her for a second. “You break shit, you replace it. You’ll get a $500 monthly allowance for clothes and makeup. Budget properly and don’t bitch at me if you go over.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “The tips you get are yours, but you will be expected to pony up 15% to the other staff. If you get cheap, we won’t know, but we’ll figure you out eventually.”

Vanessa snorted. “I will be an ethical stripper,” she promised, clapping her hand over her heart. "Scout's honor."

“Lastly, you pull any shit with me like you have with your last bosses, I’ll lay you out.” She smiled thinly. “I’m not asking anything more from you than what you’re already prepared to give me. You follow the rules and do your job, and we’ll be fast friends.”

Vanessa dropped her hand. She frowned at her. “I don’t do friends.”

“Not surprised. Off the record anecdotes aside, your reference from St. Margaret’s warned me that you don’t play well with others.”

Weasel! That motherfucker...


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The new "Accidental Overdose" tag refers to a situation where some medical professionals miscalculate how much sedatives/pain killers to give a certain someone with a wonky healing factor. It is quickly reversed. All is well.

A black van rolled by, making a left at the end of the road. Wade shuffled his blanket of old newspapers, ducking his bare face lower in his collar. He kept an eye on the red-bricked building across him—Solace House.

Solace House was a special program for former foster kids who were made homeless over their mutations. It was run by mutants for mutants. It prided itself on providing housing, job and vocational support, life skills, and pathways into college.

It was very tiny and very new, flying under the radar so far for both the local bigots and certain nosy bald telepaths in wheelchairs. They were only serving ten kids so far, but the work they did for those kids was deep, intensive, and just plain good.

It was a quality program. It was also being targeted by human traffickers.

The black van swung by again for another slow, obvious pass. Solace House was too new to know what to look out for in these situations. But SHIELD sure as hell wasn’t.

If only Wade could trust SHIELD intentions with this.

Wade felt distinctly like he was being trained like a dog, like they were trying to get him to get in the habit of saying yes to things so that he’d keep saying yes in the future. They kept giving him easy assignments—low hanging fruit. Non-controversial missions. Targets Wade would have offed for free.

Thing is, it was his own damn fault. He’d shown his hand with the Jersey assignment. He was just supposed to pop his head in and rattle some cages on those docks. But he’d ran into those kids instead, and the whole damn mission went sideways. After dealing his own brand of justice, Wade had grabbed the kids and loaded them up with Mexican food and enough candy to rot their teeth out, driving around in circles in Neckbeard’s shitty cargo van until Melinda May herself came to retrieve them and take them home.

And even then, Wade’d had no fucking chill. After May reported that she’d brought them back home, he’d swung by their house himself, watching over it for two nights, soothed only by the sight of the kids smiling and doted on by a tired mother and father. They hadn’t been sold. They’d been stolen, ripped from their loving family, and that was the only thing that could have convinced Wade to finally let them go.

SHIELD noticed. Of course they did. After dealing an official reprimand—all tsk tsk, slap on the wrist shit—the shady agency had shifted the missions they’d given him, giving him more and more kidnappings, more anti-mutant crimes, and more straight-up human trafficking.

Although Wade took those assignments happily, a big part of him was unhappy too. Wade didn’t like the thought of being handled, being maneuvered. Wade didn’t like the idea that all the links in the chains that led him to these specific assignments were so coldly calculated.

Wade wanted someone to be pissed that someplace like Solace House was being scoped out for a raid. But all he saw was apathy—from SHIELD, from the average citizen, from the media. From the so-called big-name heroes too. And Wade was worried he was starting to become apathetic to it too.

Fortunately, Wade had Vanessa. He’d only had to explain the bare minimum of his assignment before he got a reaction. Vanessa did sex work on her own terms, but many, many people in her shoes did not. Her response reminded him that decent people still existed, and the shit he kept seeing was still very much _not okay_.

After Special Forces, after Francis, after Cable and Thanos and all that—nothing surprised Wade anymore. Thank god he had Vanessa to keep him tied to reality. Who knew what kind of shitty person he’d become if the only moral compass he followed was his own?

 

-

 

This was supposed to be the kind of post-snap support group where you listened passively to other people’s stories, completely reserving judgment. This, in turn, was supposed to help make people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. But what the leader of this support group _didn’t_ understand was that some thoughts shouldn’t be shared, and that sometimes judgment, though uncomfortable, was necessary.

Sometimes silence was worse than debate, and sometimes silence without judgment rang through a room like agreement, like consensus.

But judgment came today in high heels and a leather jacket. “Go fuck yourself with a glass shard dildo, you mutant hating _fuck_.”

Peter’s phone dropped from his nerveless fingers, ripping the headphones right of out of his ears. His biochem book slipped between his thighs, no longer perfectly balanced. He tightened his knees around it, saving it from the fate of his phone.

He wasn’t the only one taken awkwardly off-guard. In the front of the room, George was blinking behind the pulpit, stunned mid-tirade against mutants. He’d been rehashing his theories about the cause of the snap—the degradation and unholiness of a society that allowed crimes against nature to run free… blah, blah, blah. Peter was used to discretely sticking in his earbuds whenever George made his way to the microphone, waddling in like a self-important tech giant in sandals and socks. 

Her name was Vanessa. She was new. She’d come up to the front before all this and introduced herself. She had only been in New York for a few years, and she joked that her husband said it was finally time for her to make new friends. And she’d said more than that, Peter was sure, but most of his attention had been on the homework he’d had on his lap. He’d only given her a brief glance before dropping it back down to his textbook, and his look revealed nothing but a conventionally attractive woman wearing clothes that were possibly a smidge too low-cut for their borrowed church environment.

Then… Well, then there was the dildo comment. Now she had 100% of his attention. In fact, she had _everyone’s_ attention. Peter wasn’t the only one gaping stupidly at where she was standing, hands fisted on the back of a pew. For a moment, it was like time stood still.

Then the silence of the church erupted in quiet, guilty snickers.

If anything, that just hardened Vanessa’s expression. She grabbed her bag and stormed out, edges of her jacket flying out like the wings of an avenging angel. Following after her for a few steps, George started sputtering angrily, fluffing back up his ego. Talking over him, the facilitator of the group stood up between them and tried to get the group back on track. Both men lost control of the meeting then, the murmur of people talking only growing louder and louder as people turned to their neighbors to chat.

And Peter, well… Peter froze in place for a second, balanced on an edge between two choices.

It was an easier decision to make than he expected.

He hastily shoved all of his stuff in a pile and crammed the whole thing into his bag messily. Then he stood, swiping his phone off the floor before lunging out of the pew. Head down, he sped walked to the exit of the church, leaving the growing clamor of the support group behind him.

Once outside of the church, he ran, scanning the streets for Vanessa’s distinctive dual toned hair. He made an abrupt left when he saw her in the distance, feet pounding the pavement as he tried to catch up. He got held up at a crosswalk, impatiently rocking from foot to foot as he watched her walk around a building and out of sight. When he finally had the go-ahead, he raced forward, out of breath.

But when he made a turn around the building, she was gone.

Disappointed, he spun once, looking at both sides of the street. Spider-Man wouldn’t have lost her, he couldn’t help but think. He spun again, trying to figure out where she went. Still seeing nothing, he shuffled along the street a little while further, trying to remember if there was a bus stop or a subway entrance nearby.

His mental map of New York was a little dated—plus, everything looked different from the street level.

Consumed by a growing certainty that there was a subway station a few blocks away, he didn’t notice the alleyway until he was dragged into it. He yelped, closing his eyes defensively as he was shoved against a brick wall.

“I charge extra for creepy. Explain yourself. 140 characters or less.”

Peter opened his eyes slowly, already wincing. A few days later, he’d kick himself for the way he’d bumbled into this. Because the first time Peter Parker saw Vanessa Carlysle up close and personal, he gasped. Not because she was hands down the most beautiful woman he had ever seen (which she was). Not because he was an awkward 23-year-old nerd (which _he_ was). And certainly not because she surprised him (which she did).

No. He gasped because she was pressing a three-inch blade just under his belly button.

“Well?” she said expectantly, one eyebrow perfectly arched.

Peter wheezed in response. He’d had such a vivid image of how he was going to approach this. He was going to intercept her, say hello, and push the information about the other groups into her hands. Then he was going to walk away.

Seriously. Nothing more than that. _Hi. I’m Peter. Not all New York City’s support groups are trash like what you just saw. Good luck!_ That was it. That simple.

How did he already screw it up?

Now, she’d taken control of the situation. Now, she’d demanded a response. And now, Peter’s mind was totally blank.

He started to panic. “I-” _I’m sorry_ , he thought. He discarded it. No, too inadequate.

“Well, I just-” _I didn’t want you to give up on this._ No, too patronizing. What did he know about her, about her life?

“Y-you see-” _There are better support groups in town. I’ve been to every single one of them._ No, too needy. Too honest. Too weird. Even Aunt May didn’t know about his little post-snap obsession, and Peter was not ready to open up about _that_.

But Vanessa was still there. Staring at him.

Then she rocked her weight back on her heels, considering him. The knife was no longer pressing as tightly to his stomach; somewhere in his stammering, he’d clearly been downgraded as a threat. “Cat got your tongue?”

When Peter just stared at her, baffled, she snorted, pulling away from him. In a blink, Vanessa’s knife was gone, hidden away in a smooth roll of her wrist. Stupidly, he wanted to see it again, his hand twisting by his side in an aborted mimicry of her motion.

Then his focus abruptly narrowed to the finger in his face. “Whoever you are, whoever you work for? Stay. _The fuck_. Away from me.”

“I was-”

“I don’t care,” she barked, walking off, hands shoved deep in her jacket.

“…That’s fair,” Peter muttered, defeated.

Then he saw she’d dropped her wallet—a slim leather slip of a thing. Peter bent over, flipping it over in one hand. When his rattled brain caught up with what he had, he shot up and jogged after her.

 “Wait,” Peter rasped. “Wait!”

Not very far away, Vanessa stopped in the middle of the crosswalk. Peter was still sucking at this so, so badly. In fact, she turned slowly, eyes blazing, clearly bracing for a fight.

But she wasn’t bracing for the car barreling towards her. She didn’t notice the distracted driver leaning over, trying to grab something in his footwell. She didn’t see him fail to register the people still crossing the street.

But Peter did.

He lunged the rest of the way forward, shoving Vanessa towards the sidewalk. He twisted away from the car, already cringing at the screech of too late brakes.

He didn’t remember a whole lot after that.

 

-

 

“Tony, they didn’t know,” Pepper said in his ear.

“Ignorance isn’t a defense, honey,” Tony retorted. He was shaking. The car came to a stop, and Happy opened the door before he had to force his hands into submission. Huffing, Tony pushed out of the car, tugging his suit jacket down. Holding onto the door, Happy avoided eye contact—had been since the panic attack earlier that morning.

“But getting them fired over an accidental overdose? Tony, it wasn’t negligence on their end. It was his particular _biology_ , and you know it!” Pepper Potts always had the unique talent of drilling past Tony’s anger and fear to the core truth of a situation.

Even when it hurt. Maybe especially when it hurt.

A long moment passed. On the other end of the call, Tony could hear people talking—a board meeting, maybe. Tony had a tendency of interrupting those.

“Well, I can’t fire me, now can I?” After all, he was the only one really at fault here. Peter’s particular biology would certainly be easier to predict if a certain someone hadn’t gone to the trouble of strong-arming the kid into taking a cure.

And goddamn was his cure a terrible thing.

It was a byproduct of sleepless nights caving into Bruce’s desire to get rid of the Hulk. It was nanotech, designed to bind to and suppress abnormalities on a basic, genetic level. Of course, none of that worked on the Hulk—nothing worked on the Hulk—but the invention gained new life when the Sokovia Accords started taking prisoners. Then people like Wanda became Tony’s next motivation behind the invention. If Tony could just switch off whatever made Wanda work, maybe he could convince them to at least take the bindings off. Let her leave the cell. Let her rehabilitate back into society and be _normal_.

The bindings came off eventually, and his window of opportunity came and went. He never did figure out what Wanda’s switch was. But he didn’t stop tweaking. It was a weakness of his. Once he had an idea, an itch, he wouldn’t stop scratching it until he was satisfied.

By the time Peter crashed back into his life, bright-eyed and triumphant and tanned and _happy_ , Tony had an invention with potential—at least, enough potential to make a spider-themed superhero look like Joe Average to the United States government.

But the invention was imperfect. Sure, it worked to bind and hide the irregularities in Peter’s DNA, but it could only block _some_ expressions of his mutation—and never consistently.

Realistically, Tony knew it was imperfect because he himself had an imperfect understanding of genetics. It was like trying to design a hinge on a part Tony could only look at from the corner of his eye and never touch. No, genetics was still a field that needed exploring, and that was the only explanation he had for May for why Peter was semi-blind only half of the time. Why Peter would sometimes fall into an asthma attack in one minute and be perfectly fine the next. Why his brain screamed at him when there was no danger, why he stuck to things when he least expected it-

And why giving him any sort of first aid was frustrating at best and hazardous at worst.

Tony turned back to the car abruptly, bracing an arm against the roof. His hands were still fisted, still shaking. Tony knew from previous experience that Spider-Man had a high tolerance for pain killers, sedatives, and other chemicals.

But today, somewhere in the middle of treating him, Spider-Man had turned back into Peter Parker, and Peter almost died over it.

And that was really no one’s fault but Tony’s.

“I know you’re upset,” Pepper said quietly. Tony bowed his head. “I’m upset too. And you can be upset. You should be upset. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” There was a long pause. “But just think about how _he’s_ going to see this…”

Tony paused, looking up again. He stared blankly into the empty space of the parking garage. He then looked down at his Italian leather shoes, his expensive pressed slacks and, above that, the glow of his extremely priceless Iron Man suit. He tapped at it with two fingers, frowning pensively.

Peter had been a part of a lower-middle-class family his entire life. They tried their best, but the Parker family had been living paycheck by paycheck since before May Parker lost her husband.

Peter would feel horrible for the people who lost their jobs. Tony didn’t. Tony was results-based—always had been. If you were a doctor who almost got someone killed, then you deserved to be fired, innocent mistake or not.

But Peter wouldn’t think about that. Peter would think about the person’s livelihood, their family. He wouldn’t forgive Tony for flexing his influence, but Tony had been dealing with disappointment from that front for almost 4 years. So what? Peter being mad at Tony was a given.

But Peter being mad at _Peter_? That was unbearable.

After a moment, Tony sighed. Then he nodded once, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’ll give them some recommendations. Make sure they’re employed by someone else by the end of the week. Okay?”

“Okay, honey,” Pepper said, voice warming. Tony could imagine her face at the moment, the tilt of her head. The smile that reached her eyes-

“Tony-” Happy said under his breath, squinting suspiciously at the crowd of people emerging from the elevator.

Tony spun towards them casually, pinning his feelings to deal with later. “Well, my people need me. Love you.” Before she could respond, he tapped his earpiece, shutting down the call.

Then, grandiosely, he turned towards the excited group. “My people!” he called out across the parking garage, his voice echoing.

This only encouraged them. “Mr. Stark!”

“Hey, boss! I have a few quick questions-”

As they hurried over, Happy came up beside him. “Pete’s a tough kid,” he said out of nowhere. “The kind who can take a few punches to the head and walk away just fine.” When Tony just stared, Happy glared down at him. “Yeah?”

Tony paused, considering a few responses. Then, quietly, he said, “How about the kind that gets up from an overdose?”

“You did at his age,” Happy said ruthlessly. “And he’s a hell of a lot better kid than you were.”

Tony cracked up. He was still giggling when the greeting party finally reached them. Smirking, he pointed at Happy. “You want him, right? Pretty sure he makes the decisions around here-”

Deflection aside, Tony was immediately enveloped by the group, bombarded by greetings and small talk. There was at least fifteen of them, and, off to the side, he could see Happy losing his ever-loving mind, trying to match each person to the people he’d cleared to access Tony’s personal bubble.

“You, who are you? And you—don’t walk away from me! Hey you! Who cleared the haircut? It’s not authorized-”

Despite Happy’s best attempts, Tony was immediately ushered into the elevator and steered deeper into the building.

When the doors opened again, he walked out into an active construction zone. It was a chaotic mess. Tony stepped into the fray like he was stepping out onto a stage—grinning and pleased.

Around him, lights flashed irregularly. The buzzing sounds of multiple tools nearly drowned out the sweating project lead as he tried to give Tony a week’s worth of status updates with only two breaths. Dust lingered in the air, and a charming New Yorker technician barked at the group of them for getting too close to an unfinished exhibit, a curse word paired lovingly with each and every verb.

But in the turmoil of it all, he saw the final product, and he was glad.

The project lead mopped up his forehead. “Mr. Stark, the Infinity Museum will be ready by opening day, but some of the exhibits will require more time than expected…”

“Money’s no object. Hire more people. Make sure it gets done right.”

“Thank you, sir-”

The project manager was hip bumped away from Tony by a harassed-looking personal assistant with three pens in her hair and the last gen model of a Stark Pad. “The envoy from the Wakandan government has reviewed and approved the Wakandan exhibit, Mr. Stark.”

“Good! Send Shuri a thank you basket.”

“Also, the Spider-Man memorial video has been finalized, and just needs your approval, sir-”

“Send it to FRIDAY. I’ll give you an answer in an hour.”

The PA nodded and disappeared, leaving another one in her wake. This one looked even angrier. “Mr. Stark!”

And so, the walking meeting continued in this fashion, Tony shedding followers as answers were given and approvals were greenlit. Meanwhile, Tony walked along the stretch of exhibits, pleased at all he could see.

It was a luxury sports car in red and gold. It was buying out a smaller company under a rival just because the rival pissed him off. It was the Mark 1 Iron Man suit after too many weeks of torture and terror.

It was unrepentant. Blunt. In-your-face. Angry. And 100% likely to get him in even deeper shit. But that was a worry for another time.

Tony answered his last round of questions and lost his last tail. Finally alone, he came to a slow stop at an almost finished gallery. Looking left and right for staff and seeing none, he slipped in past the ladders and plastic sheeting into a long hallway of Avenger tech and equipment.

None of it the real deal, of course, but enough of it was more than cheap replicas. No, they were improvements, collecting dust in Tony’s labs before the museum was even an idea. Natasha’s suit with more padding and more pockets. Hawkeye’s quiver with more arrow capacity. A better shield for Steve. Stretchy shorts for Bruce so he wasn’t on the verge of a fashion faux-pas every time he got a little hot under the collar.

Even a spider suit with a place for a miniaturized arc reactor. It was built not necessarily for the Spider-Man he’d erased, but rather the Spider-Man left alone on an alien planet with only an AI to talk to. Like most things he did, the gesture was useless. So here too was the suit’s final home: the gallery of misfit toys.

Tony was dragged out of his thoughts by the approach of another assistant. This one looked young, big-eyed, and less like to bite chunks out of metal if someone got in his way. He must have been new.

“Sir,” the kid breathed, white knuckling his tablet. “Sir, there’s a man in the Titan exhibit.”

“He isn’t part of the team?” The assistant shook his head once. “Then kick him out. This is a closed site. You know this.”

Know it or not, the assistant looked terrified at the thought. “Sir, I can’t kick him out,” he hissed. He crept a little closer to Tony and whispered some more information, visibly shaking in his boots.

It didn’t take much for him to convince Tony to move. A moment later, Tony was striding quickly towards the Titan exhibit, biting the inside of his cheek so hard, he tasted blood.

He expected to run into other people along the way, but it seemed like even the most diligent of the contractors and project leads found something else to do in lieu of confronting his visitor. They were eager to miss what was about to happen next. Hell, Tony wished he was with them.

But he had to be there. If he wasn’t, someone else would have to stand in his place, and what was the point of anything he did post-snap if he was the kind of person who let someone else stand in the line of fire? Especially _this_ fire?

By the time he got there, the holographic display in the Titan exhibit was on, recreating a 3D space of that volatile alien terrain. In the simulated sky, chunks of an old moon floated eerily towards abandoned buildings. According to Thanos, the structures, like nothing on Earth, were decimated long before the planet was turned into a battleground over the Infinity Gauntlet. When Tony was working with FRIDAY to turn his and Peter’s suit recordings into something that could be shared, he couldn’t help but think it was a weirdly beautiful planet, for all of its damage. For all that had happened there.  

A man stood in the middle of the display, his back to Tony, his graying hair almost red in the simulation. A hand reached out, almost of its own volition, fingers grazing over a floating rock made of light, electrons, and not much else.

Tony missed the days where an unexpected visitor meant he was about to get a cryptic message or caustic reprimand from one Nick Fury. As much as they clashed, Fury was the one man in the world more paranoid than Tony about the damage that the future would bring. Tony respected that. Respected him.

Tony did not respect Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. Not anymore.

Tony stuck his hands in his pockets. “So. What do you think?”

The hand retreated. The man turned around. “I think it’s unbelievably shallow and flashy,” Ross said in a clipped tone. He smoothed his tailored suit back to military straightness.

Tony shrugged, making his way closer to Ross. “Shallow and flashy? Kinda my brand.”

“It’s also highly treasonous,” Ross told him coldly. “This museum of yours is a cesspool of classified information.”

Tony liked him better when he was just a tired general chasing after one of Tony’s best friends. “You haven’t heard? You must be behind the times, what with you not being Secretary of State anymore.” Ross twitched at the dig. “Congress declassified the Infinity Affair, like, 14 months ago-”

“And whose fault was that?” Ross drawled, eyes narrowed. His hands clasped behind him, he circled Tony slowly. “The US government was forced into releasing that information to the public because neither Wakanda _nor_ New Asgard protected it, and”—here, to the left of Tony, Ross bared his teeth—“the Asgardians _so_ love their internet.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, leaning back on his heels, “who knew a bunch of ye olden time people would be _so_ into online gaming?”

Behind him, Ross snorted. “I suppose it is the least of your collusion with foreign nations…”

That stung. “What does that mean?” Tony pivoted on his heel, glaring at Ross from half a foot away. “For the _hundredth_ time, I had no input in Thor adopting Rogers or T’Challa adopting Barnes. That was their choice, not mine-”

There was a crack in there about new expectant fathers and rowdy adopted children, and he was working up to it—really, he was. But Ross was already talking, already getting in his face.

“And yet I’m supposed to believe that two _highly_ different societies with two _highly_ different codes of law, one of which isn’t even from Earth, could come up with the same _highly_ political action within a week of each other?” Here, Ross smirked thinly. “Sure sounds like they have an advisor in common, don’t you think?”

He tapped Tony’s heart—his suit—meaningfully. It wasn’t attached to his heart, not anymore, but for a moment, Tony was breathless. For a moment, Tony felt like he was in space again, carrying that nuke ever upwards. For a moment, Tony felt like he was being waterboarded again in a desert.

Ross took advantage of his silence. “You may have earned Barnes and Rogers a small breath of amnesty, but you’re still subject to our laws, which means you’re subject to _me_.”

“Last I checked,” Tony retorted automatically, “this was still a democracy.”

“And last I checked, you signed a contract.” Ross pushed past him, walking out. “Or are you weaseling out of that like you’ve weaseled out of everything else in your life?”

It was a nasty potshot at his and Pepper’s canceled engagement, but it missed its target entirely. In that parting comment, Tony didn’t hear Ross. He heard _Howard_. Strangely, this helped. Howard Stark was a flawed man—a brilliant one still but deeply damaged well before Tony was ever born. Howard was just as concerned with leashing Tony, and he’d gotten nasty too when he failed.

“I thought we needed to answer to a higher authority,” Tony said instead, ignoring the shitty comment. The steps behind him paused. “Someone who had everyone else’s best interests in mind.” Tony turned, making a face. “Somehow, you don’t strike me as the man we had in mind.”

Ross was halfway up the small set of steps that divided the exhibit from the rest of the museum. “Fortunately, that’s not your decision.” He was fiddling with his cufflinks, half-turned towards Tony. Tony wouldn’t have been surprised if the cufflinks were a mike or a weapon of some sort.

“I’m in control, not you,” Ross continued, voice calm and casual, “and I’m going to drag this country into order by whatever means necessary. Even if it kicks. Even if it screams. Get used to it, Stark. The public might not know it, but the Avengers are tools in this task, nothing more.”

A churning sort of nausea clawed at Tony’s stomach. “I’m the only Avenger _left_ ,” he spat.

“Shouldn’t that tell you something?” Ross looked up finally. “Tools can be replaced.”

 

-

 

The elevator dinged gently as the doors closed. In the reflection of the walls, Vanessa squinted at herself. Her nose wrinkled back at her. It smelled like bleach and antiseptic, even here. As the elevator rose, she reached up to the purpling mess that was her forehead, tracing over the 7 stitches from where she hit the curb. It had become a bit of a habit for her, fingers lightly tracing over those Frankenstein lines.

It could have worse. It could have been much, much worse.

The doors opened. Vanessa cleared her expression of her frown, stepping out onto the hospital floor. She was immediately greeted by a nurse at the station.

“Oh, Vanessa! There you are. You’re healing so well.” Her name was Monica, and she said this like she hadn’t been saying the same damn thing for the last three days.

But because Vanessa wasn’t an idiot, she merely chirped, “Thank you!”

Vanessa had strung along more than one john to serve her own needs. This hyper-competent (and hyper bored) nurse was nothing in comparison. Vanessa had the nurse—and, hell, all of the nursing staff on this floor—wrapped around her little finger. And it was a good thing she did too. She was hiding out in a five-star elitist hospital with no external signage, whole fleets of doctors dedicated to only a handful of patients, and not a single care about normal people things like insurance. She was pretty sure she saw _Iron Man_ landing on the roof once too.

She couldn’t be more out of place if she tried, so it was best if she laid low and didn’t make any splashes.

But damn. Just who the hell was Peter Parker?

Vanessa approached the nurse’s station, leaning against the counter. “How are things?”

“Well,” Monica said, shuffling a Stark Pad importantly, “I heard from a little birdie that a certain someone was _very_ conscious and alert today. Talking too!” Monica beamed at her, like she was expecting a prize.

After a beat, Vanessa smiled back. She had heard plenty from Monica’s little birdies. She’d learned that two rounds of painkillers and sedatives couldn’t keep a concussed Peter Parker in bed that first day. She’d learned that the third round, though, really kicked him in the teeth, even inciting an overdose. Ever since, he’d been monitored very, very closely.

And wasn’t that just typical of her luck? It was hard enough for a girl to get some answers when her target was groggy or asleep. And it wasn’t like Vanessa to kick someone when they were down but… Parker wasn’t giving her much of a choice. He’d dropped a landmine in her lap, and she had no idea how to defuse it.

That day, her tail had taken the blow of the car meant for her, shoving her out of the way just in time. Unfortunately, she’d smacked her head against the curb in the process. When she was finally able to push herself up, she’d looked back just to see the quick footwork of a taxi that kept him from being run over in the intersection. It could have been much worse for him too, but some Good Samaritans jumped out in traffic, dragging Parker back to the sidewalk.

They dropped him right next to her. Parker was limp, silent, and pale, nothing like the blushing, stuttering man who’d followed her so ineptly. Concussed and confused, Vanessa’d barely wrapped her head around it, around his motives, around _him_.

So when swarming pedestrians tried to assure her that her “friend” was okay and that help was on the way, maybe Vanessa decided to lean into it. Maybe she pickpocketed him and found his student ID. Maybe she bullied her way into the ambulance with some crocodile tears.

And maybe—just maybe—she even went as far as claiming to be his girlfriend.

And it was good that she did. When his name went over the radio, the EMTs changed routes away from the local public hospital to this swanky looking place buried in Manhattan with its high-tech features and its whisper silent staff.

After getting her stitches, Vanessa’d spent that first hour alone in the lobby, face hidden by her hair as she tried to process everything that had happened that day. All she could figure at the time was that the chances of her stalker being a SHIELD agent were getting higher and higher. She’d made a decision early on that she would punch Phil Coulson in the face herself if need be, but she needed answers first. She needed Parker.

So she calmed herself down, cleaned herself up, and solidified her story in her head. 70 minutes in, she had Monica eating out of the palm of her hand.

Then the aunt arrived and punched a hole right through all of her grim calculations.

“Oh. But you’re so pretty,” May Parker had blurted out, visibly surprised when Monica called her Peter’s girlfriend. “I mean, not that I don’t think Peter could have a pretty girlfriend—you should have seen the first one. Very _very_ pretty. Just, um… a little troubled? There were some family issues, very complicated… Not that I think you’re troubled, honey! I just, um-”

And, for another five minutes, May’d blushed deeply and tried to make a better first impression. But the longer she talked, the more she dug herself in a deeper and deeper hole. And all of this made Vanessa… pause.

Because for the first time in hours, her growing anger was faltering.

She was not a person who lacked confidence. She was just as comfortable donning a dominatrix outfit during a full Catholic mass as she was swigging from a whiskey bottle in the middle of an AA meeting. She didn’t second guess herself a lot. But the more she saw stammering and flushing and shoving their foot in their mouth as a Thing Parkers Did™, the more and more guilty she felt about pulling a knife on this sweet lady’s nephew.

Vanessa was in the middle of awkwardly downplaying the girlfriend thing to just friend status when Parker overdosed. That was a wild few hours where she had front row seats to how quickly a Parker could pivot from almost painful awkwardness to a towering, protective fury.

The hospital bent over backwards to fix their mistakes. They really rolled out the special treatment—catered food, expensive coffee, a private room for Parker, and a private waiting room with pullout couches for them. They even had the director herself come down and talk May through what happened and what they were going to do about it. Vanessa’d missed most of that conversation—not that it mattered, thanks to Monica’s birdies—but she didn’t miss the highly individualized treatment and concern one Peter Parker was receiving from this hospital.

Vanessa didn’t get it. The treads on May’s shoes were worn down to complete smoothness. She had a discrete piece of tape holding her glasses together. When May came back with clothes for Peter, Vanessa helped fold and put them away—and all of his clothes had Goodwill tags on them. More than a few of them were painfully thin from wear and tear.

Private hospitals generally didn’t care about the health and happiness of those outside of the wealthy class. So, again, who _the hell_ was Peter Parker?

She didn’t twiddle her thumbs while Parker was incapacitated. No, when not gently pulling information from Parker’s protective aunt, she looked the guy on the internet. Thing is, the internet didn’t have much to share about Peter Parker either. Sure, she found a press release or two about who made the Honor Roll at Empire State University. There were a couple of idle mentions of a Peter Parker buried deep in message boards. Star Wars stuff—she didn’t bother reading all the way through.

She thought she’d found the jackpot when she stumbled on a whole damn article on the guy in the Daily Bugle. At first glance, the article was about some presentation he did two years ago on adhesives, but a thorough reading revealed that most of the piece was on the research conference. There was very little on the key speaker himself. Even the picture they’d used for it had Parker half-turned away from the viewer, as if he was camera shy.

That seemed to be a theme for his internet presence. In general, there were very few pictures of Parker floating around. A somewhat regular stream of social media content had stopped around 6 or 7 years ago, trickling down to meek birthday well wishes and occasional photos of random items.

If she had to make a judgment call on the guy with only her internet findings so far in three words, she’d probably pepper in the words _bland_ , _boring_ , and possibly even _nerd_. But she met him in person, so she couldn’t be so flippant. _Bland, boring, and nerd_ was so not the background of someone who would put his life on the line for someone who just threatened to take it.

Ugh. Vanessa was so frustrated with how little the search had told her. She knew she could throw the name to Weasel, but it would cost her—money, time, and patience.

So the alternative on this day was the same as it was on day 1: she had to talk to Parker. She was going to get the truth from the source. But maybe… if he was honest… she’d let the stalking slide. If only out of respect for his aunt. If only out of guilt for his injuries.

Vanessa made her way to Parker’s room and slipped inside. The aunt was missing, regretfully tethered to her day job, but she’d passed her phone number on to Vanessa to text her if anything changed. That was more trust than Vanessa deserved, as she herself was one of the extra stressors that was about to happen to her nephew.

As she closed the door behind her, Vanessa cut herself some slack—she was owed a response. Or something.

Despite the chattering of Monica’s birdies, Parker was just as unconscious as he had been the last couple of days. Examining his lax face for a moment, she kicked out the chair by his bed and plopped hard down on it. She propped her feet up on the side of the bud, idly scrolling through the internet on her phone, as usual.

But today would be different after all. It only took him another hour to wake up.

Vanessa stopped browsing when he shifted in place, mumbling something under his breath. Over her phone, she watched as he blinked slowly, eyes unfocused. She’d seen enough of that over the last few days, so she didn’t expect anything more. But then he pushed himself up to a seated position, one hand lifting to clamp over his face.

“…Ow,” he said very, very quietly.

Vanessa leveled a shark’s smile at her would-be stalker. “Welcome to the land of the living, Sleeping Beauty,” she purred.

Beauty was probably not the right word. Without gel or shampoo, his hair was an oily mess of waves that curled over his ears and fingers. His neck was mottled with yellowing bruises. More bruises bloomed across his neck, torso, and hands. His right arm was taped up with bandages and his left was immobilized by a cast. He had a long scrape over his cheek from where his face met the road, and his skin was very, very pale under all of his injuries.

After a beat, that shielding hand shifted, and one dark brown eye squinted at her in confusion. “Hi?” he asked tentatively. “Do you work here?”

Well. Wasn’t that a bitch. Flustered, Vanessa scowled at him. “If you forgot who I am, you and I are going to have some problems,” she said flatly.

Irritated, she kicked her feet off the bed. Now that he was awake, she was jittery. Shaking, actually, forced to face the fact that, as pissed as she was about it, Parker being a SHIELD agent was actually the best-case scenario. Wade hadn’t started rooting around the local gangs and organizations in New York, but he’d highlighted a few he’d like to piss off. There were some pretty rotten things happening in the city, and Parker could be a herald of any one of them.

“Right,” Parker said quickly, wide-eyed. He groped blindly at the table next to his bed until he found and picked up the glasses the aunt had left behind. He crammed them on his face. He looked at her expectantly. Then his eyebrows shot up. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Vanessa echoed—and not kindly either. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped in front of her. “You know why I’m here?”

It took the guy a second to remember. “The car,” Parker breathed, eyes wide. He swung his cast closer to her abortedly. “Are you okay?

Vanessa stared at him in disbelief. “Your arm is literally broken, asshole.” He started to say something, but she cut him off. “Stop. Look. What you did-” _That’s the only reason why you’re getting a second chance_ , she wanted to say. She didn’t. “You have one last chance to explain to me why you were following me that day.” Vanessa glared at him to press the seriousness of this. “One shot. Don’t blow it with idle shit or I’m leaving.”

Most men she knew would take that as a challenge and test her. Or worse, they’d gaslight her, denying basic facts to try and make her second guess herself. She expected the second route the most from Parker. Even though he didn’t immediately recognize her, he’d had several periods of wakefulness and lucidness since his accident to rethink his approach to her. Even a rookie SHIELD agent would jump at full speed at having a chance to reset a poorly executed mission.

But Parker just signed and nodded. “Can you give me my backpack?”

Suspicious, she stared at him for a long moment before pushing herself up and heading over to the closet. Of course she'd gone through it already. Of course. When she opened it two days ago, all she saw were two broken binders, 3 textbooks, and a cracked TI-84 calculator. She hadn’t registered the blood stain on the backpack until today, though, which caused her to pause for a second before bringing it over.

He took it from her with a small smile, immediately zipping it open. “The second time around, I followed you because you dropped your wallet.”

Vanessa didn’t sit, tucking her hands under her elbows. “I got it back.” Eventually.

“Good,” Parker said, rooting around the damages with the frown. “The first time around, I, um. I wanted to give you… well. This.”

Parker hesitated, then pulled out the smaller of the two binders.

Vanessa took it from him like she was handling a bomb. What was inside? Photos? Surveillance? Blackmail. It had to be blackmail. Some dirt on Wade or Vanessa or any of their friends. There were too many enhanced people in their lives, and she’d heard so many stories of petty shit heads calling in tips about their neighbors and their alleged Sokovia Accords violations like it was fucking modern witch hunt.

Grimly, she opened it up, ready to deal with anything Parker had to throw at her—

Except for a collection of notes and flyers on every Infinity Affair support group in New York City.

Vanessa’s fingers tightened on the broken binder. The penny finally dropped three days too fucking late.

Parker wasn’t acting like a SHIELD agent because. He. Wasn’t. _One_.

He was exactly what her research and her spying and her questioning had always indicated he was: Normie McNormalson. Bland. Boring. Nerd. Awkward college student. And a guy willing to shove a girl out of the way of an incoming vehicle.

_Fuck._ How did she mess this up so badly?

In front of her, Parker seemed more anxious now than when she pulled a knife on him. “I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business, but… you said that your husband wanted you to make friends, right? But you came to support group to do it. That means you want people who understand you, who share that life experience. Instead, you got George, who said some mean stuff, and the rest of us, who just let it happen.” Parker looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “There are better places, better groups. Better _people_. I… shouldn’t have followed you like that. That was shitty of me. I just… didn’t want you to give up just yet.”

Vanessa silently sank down in the chair again, gently resting the broken binder on her knees. She didn’t know the meaning of "give up". Maybe that was the problem. Who the hell stuck around the hospital room of a maybe-stalker for three whole days instead of taking the hint to beat it and hide? The best things in her life came from sinking her teeth into things and not letting go. The worst things too, now that she thought about it.

Her lack of commentary seemed to encourage Parker. “I know we didn’t give a great first impression, but, um, George… the guy at the group. The one who made you leave. While he was gone, his daughter’s mutation manifested in a major way. The X-Men are pretty much the only people around who could have responded to that, but half of the X-Men were gone. By the time they got to her, her mutation had already killed her.” Parker chewed on his lip for a moment, then said, “It doesn’t justify what he says, and it definitely doesn’t make it okay… but he _is_ coming from a place of pain.” His voice went very hushed, softening as if he expected to be yelled at. “And that, I feel, is something we all can relate to, in one way or another.”

Vanessa huffed at that. “Pain. The universal constant,” she said dully.

She should have felt relief. Instead, she felt something closer to the shock of adrenaline wearing off. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t have to deal with SHIELD or an enemy of Deadpool when Wade was out of town. She thought she was so ready. Instead, she was like this—weak. Instead, she was unprepared.

Instead, she almost gutted a well-meaning college student. She was the fucking worst.

Maybe that was a different kind of pain.

“Vanessa, are you okay?” Parker looked concerned.

“People are more anti-mutant here than they were in Boston,” Vanessa said in lieu of a direct response.

Parker smiled at that. “People are more anti-everything here,” he said with an obvious fondness for the city.

Vanessa considered him for a long moment. Then she closed the binder. “My husband loves New York,” she said candidly, crossing her legs. “Me, on the other hand… I’m still trying to find a reason to tolerate it.”

Parker tilted his head, like he heard more in that than she meant to share. Still with that small smile, he asked in a hushed voice, “Have even you _tried_ the food?”

That surprised a laugh out of her—god. She was so tired. She spared a smile for him. “Why? You have any recommendations?”


	3. Chapter 3

Of the fifty states, Florida was the one Wade liked the least.

Humidity plus Kevlar and leather? Just awful. Awful enough for him to consider a season-appropriate remix of his usual duds. But what would that look like? Rips at the knees? Tank tops? Knee windows? Croptop and booty shorts? Anyway-

“- _breathability_ is what I’m thinking here,” Wade continued emphatically as he tried tying a fancy bow. “But now that I say it out loud, I’m thinking that kind of wardrobe change might be a bit too spicy for this old retirement community…”

His host jiggled, a thick drop of sweat oozing past the blood on his face as he fought the pink ribbon binds that tied him to his high back dining chair. Wade pulled the knot extra tight over the man’s chest. Why, it was practically Christmas in July! When Wade made a humming noise, gazing at him expectantly, the man purpled deep into his receding hairline.

Instead of appreciating Wade’s attention to detail, his mark wheezed out a series of outlandish (and weirdly on the nose) speculations about Wade’s parentage. “-and you can go fuck yourself, you fucking _freak_ ,” he finished in an amusing mix of defiance and fear.

Wade chuckled mildly, patting the man’s face twice with a broad, open palm. Aaand this message was brought to you by Scum of The Earth, LLC!

Yes, gentle reader, here we have a genuine, almost mint, limited edition human trafficking pervert. Call in now to claim your very Lousy Fucking Human BeingTM. Only available while supplies last!

Because in about five minutes, this fucker will be dead. To rights.

But also just dead.

“Wish I could, mi amigo. Can’t even suck my own dick—and I tried. Oh boy, did I try…” Standing from his crouch, Wade wiped away a single tear, sighing dramatically. In lieu of a convenient fainting couch, he hopped up on the dining table, sitting on the edge of it and swinging his legs like a child. “So… Danny boy. What’s new? How are the kids?”

Danny stared at him incredulously. Probably because his name wasn’t Danny. Probably because he was tied to a chair. Or probably because Wade wandered in the middle of his breakfast that morning wearing a sultry French maid’s outfit over his sexy (sweaty) leather. Danny’d thrown an entire danish plate at him, raspberry preserves everywhere…RIP, maid outfit—you will be sorely missed.

Anyhoo, Wade’s mark was rapidly approaching the breaking point that many marks (and even some Marks) before him eventually reached. That is, his rage was starting to drown out his fear.

“Die,” the man rasped, continuing, “in a fire. Preferably surrounded by all the dirty fucking muties who sent you to me.”

“Been there, tried that, emerged like a phoenix or whatever—speaking of which, what is Florida’s opinions on naked people anyway? Because it’s that hot. I don’t want to assume anything though. I know “Florida Man” has to be a statistical anomaly or a meme or a cryptid or something-”

Wade abruptly pulled a knife out, dimpling the man’s wrinkly neck with the point of it.  “More importantly, how do you know it was other mutants who sent me to your front door, hm?” He kept increasing the pressure until his mark’s toes left the floor, until the chair standing to lean back ever so slightly. His voice darkened, deepening slowly. “You argued so well earlier that you had no idea why I was here, but I’m gonna be honest with you, Danny boy. I find that very, very fucking suspicious-”

“What is love?” sang one of Wade’s pockets. “Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me no more-”

Wade paused, blinking. “Hold that thought.”

Fishing out his phone, Wade slammed his knife point down into the Brazilian walnut table. Wade’s host flinched, his chair settling back down to a level playing field. His neck was bleeding. He started wheezing. 

“Hey, babe. What’s up? No, I’m free, I got time to chat-”

“What the fuck,” Danny spat, blood and spittle flying everywhere. There was something loose and hysterical about those three words, like the old fucker was going combust, anus first. He hadn’t acted that way in the beginning. Oh no, this guy was the human equivalent of an oil slick.

“Ssh…” Wade put a finger against the man’s mouth. He pressed his phone against his shoulder. “Don’t with fuck with me right now, mkay?” Wade groped for a food-soaked cloth napkin on the table amongst the corpses of perfectly good danishes and shoved it in Danny’s mouth. All the man got out was a strangled sentence that was comprised almost totally of curse words.

“You’re sure?” Vanessa asked, sounding dubious on the other end. “You sound like you’re in the middle of something.”

“Yeah, but nothing important,” Wade insisted. He idly kicked over the occupied chair, ignoring the man’s squawk, and walked into the next room for a little more _privacy_ , thank you. He closed the double doors with a pointed click. “Nothing more important than you, for sure. How are you? How’s New York? You eating? Landlord treating you good? Your work let you dance yet? If you need me to talk to someone-”

“You’re the one who left 7 voicemails, saying you wanted to talk. Don’t be coy.”

Wade pouted. He knew leaving so many voicemails in a row was kind of clingy, but their schedules never lined up anymore! Vanessa worked nights again, and Wade did most of his mercing in the morning. Then again, Wade was practically a freelancer—he made up his own hours. So their disharmony was really more of Wade’s fault.

Plus there was the fuckton of states between them. But, uh, yeah. Wade kind of made that happen too.  

Oh, and that weird, gross distance between them—the emotional one? Oh. Wait. That too was also Wade’s fault.

_Fuck_. First things first.

“Alright, dropping the small talk,” Wade said easily. He waited a beat. “ _Who the fuck split open your head, Ness?_ ”

There was a long pause on the other end. It lasted so long, Wade would have assumed the call dropped, if not for the deep breath Vanessa took on the other end.

Then, smugly, Vanessa was saying, “A curb, jackass. And your snitch is dropping the ball.” She was gloating now. “I got this injury three whole weeks ago.” Then, in a sing-song voice, she said, “Someone sucks.”

…Goddamn it, Fernando. Wade groaned loudly, ignoring the mean-spirited laughter this produced in his better half.

Look.

_Look._ He didn’t actually stick a tail on her this time, okay? Vanessa would kill him. However, he may have bribed a local bodega owner to keep an eye out for her when she left the apartment. Wade didn’t care where she went or what she did—she was a strong independent woman who needed no Wade.

No, Wade just wanted to know that she was actually _leaving_ the apartment. And if she looked healthy. Happy. Put together. Or _lonely_. She always looked so sad that time Wade left her to go after Francis…

Not that he could talk to her about it. She was a closed book most days when it came to her personal feelings, but the walls really came up when he was out. Wade didn’t kid himself, thinking he was her reason for being. But he also wasn’t blind. Vanessa had a wonderful personality and a kickass character, but she had depressive tendencies and was hella prone to isolating herself.

Wade was never going to be a stellar example of mental health (Exhibit A, Danny boy in the next room), but he’d do his bestest to keep her spirits high.

So he kept his tone light. “Okay, point to Vanessa. Brava.”

“You can’t see me, but I’m curtseying right now.” Liar.

“Who’s the guy?” Wade burst out. He promptly wanted to kick himself.

Vanessa paused again. Suddenly, she was not as amused. Suddenly, her book slammed closed, and damn there were some sharp thorns involved from his lovely rose.

“He’s six foot four, has a big dick, and I’m sleeping with him every night.”

Whatever. Good for her. But that didn’t answer any of Wade’s questions. Who was he? A john? A coworker? A neighbor? _A friend???_

Even fucking Fernando shipped it, and it was driving Wade nuts.

“Well, you know what I always say,” Wade said. “It’s never about the size of the prize, but rather the motion of the ocean.” He punctuated his sentence with a hip thrust.

“If you’re hip-thrusting right now, we’re done.”

Wade gasped, outraged. “I would _never_ -”

It was a lie. A blatant, ugly lie, and Vanessa knew better. Thankfully, she laughed. The tension from the call vanished quicker than a twenty-dollar deposit in Weasel’s online bank account. There was a reason Weasel dealt in cash—his online shopping addiction was killer, and Amazon was an enabler and a pusher all in one. All of those sweet, sweet lightning deals…

“He’s no one for you to worry about,” she said finally, relenting. “He’s just a friend. _Without benefits._ Get your mind out of the gutter. And he’s a lot shorter than you, so relax.”

He would. Eventually.

From day 1, he’d been okay with Vanessa sleeping with other people—professionally or otherwise. She’d made it clear from the get-go that the only kind of relationship she was looking for was an open one. Wade had been secretly relieved. As amazing as he knew she was, Wade had known it was only a matter of time before someone put a bullet in his head. He’d readily agreed. Over time, they’d slipped towards an odd sort of fidelity—an emotional monogamy, if you will—but Wade was still content in his place in her life.

If he wasn’t first in her bed, he wanted to be first in her heart—and he was fully aware that being first was a position he’d have to work to earn and work to keep.

And that was where he was now starting to panic. He wasn’t in New York right now to prove he was still worth Vanessa’s time. Vanessa was a woman who was worth being wined and dined and wooed and worshiped. And Wade…

Wade was _running_.

Had been since he unfucked their futures. Vanessa was being really patient with him. A level of patience he didn’t deserve. Hell, she should have dropped his ass the second the diagnosis was revealed. Instead, she dug in her heels, offering herself up as a support, a crutch, a cheerleader.

He ran then too, and look how that turned out.

Wade slowly shook away his thoughts. “…Please don’t tell me I missed your first performance?”

“I’m not a third-grader in a kiss assy school play. It’s a routine, nothing more.” Vanessa’s voice turned flirty. “And it’s nothing you haven’t seen before in private, big boy.”

Wade chuckled tiredly. Then there was a thud in the other room.

“I gotta go.”

“Give ‘em hell, Red.”

“Love you.” Wade said, hanging up. Sighing, he mumbled, “Need you. Want you.” Groaning loudly, he slapped both of his cheeks and pivoted, marching towards the doors that kept him from his prize.

He yanked both of them open like he was unveiling a new art piece, and that art piece was an oozing piece of human trafficking filth, frantically inch worming across the floor with a chair still attached to his ass.

“Leaving without saying goodbye?” Wade walked casually alongside Danny, who still crawling along like a demented snail. Getting a good grip on one of the chair legs, Wade dragged him back to his dining set, calling out cheerfully, “Come on! Between the mutant kidnappings and the new superhero factories, we have so much more to chat about!”

It took the work of a minute to get Danny boy upright again. It took another to fix the ribbons Danny had messed up in his bid for escape—gosh, no respect for presentation.

“Now. About those mutants…” Wade began, leaning menacingly over his target.

Then the doorbell rang. Wade stood up. “Coming!” he called out in a sing-songy voice. Hope sparked in Danny’s eyes. Chuckling, Wade patted his face patronizingly. “You stay right there.”

Leaving his mark behind again, Wade skipped to the front door, flinging it open. “Hello, neighbor! Fine day we’re… having…here?”

A truly massive motherfucker was standing on Danny boy’s porch. He turned around from where he was inspecting the street, icy blue eyes falling down on Wade instead. Though he had a stoic look about him, the surprise on the stranger’s face was indisputable.

“Hot damn,” Wade breathed, doing another once-over. The man was wearing a pair of black swimming trunks as well as a yellow tank top. And that tank top was heroically doing its best to keep his pecs under control—a moment of silence, please. Who ordered this specimen? Was this person a lost traveler from New Asgard? If so, Wade might have to trade zipcodes.

Wade hugged the door. “Yeah, sorry, but no. We didn’t order a Chippendale dancer, handsome. You might be looking for the lovely couple down the street—they’re _swingers_.”

Incredibly, the male model _blushed_.

Then the worst-case scenario happened—Wade’s fucking mark made another bid for freedom, successfully following Wade to the door.

At the sight of the Adonis on the porch, he screamed, “Mmpf!”

Well. That was unfortunate. Even more unfortunate was the fact that the Adonis on the porch didn’t look scared like a normal civilian. On that broad, chiseled face was a growing storm. “Wade,” the man hissed in a heavily accented voice, advancing with the inevitability of a tank.

Wade dropped back half a step, reaching for a gun. “I’m sorry, gorgeous, but I don’t think we’re on a first-name basis just yet-URK.”

Wade croaked because he’d been yanked to his tippy toes by Mr. Dream Boat. His gun fell, useless, to the ground.

“You did this to yourself, Wade,” the man said darkly. Then he cracked their skulls together.

Wade was out like a light. 

 

-

 

Peter wasn’t the only student struggling to remain conscious. The AC to the science building had up and died just that morning. While it wasn’t too hot yet, it was perfect napping weather.

Even the professor had to be feeling it and, as a result, was as cranky as the rest of them.

“Remember, this is a required course for your degree,” she was saying. “If you do not pass your final, you do not graduate.” The listless class, full of students struggling to care about the day’s lesson, squirmed at the pointed reminder that graduation was just around the corner. Peter just stared out the window, itching under his cast.

Time was relative, in more ways than one, a fact he especially understood now. The last fifteen minutes of any class always felt like an hour. Likewise, May always seemed to pass by in a blink, 30 days compressed, impossibly, to just a handful of very short weeks. Part of this perception was his own poor planning, he knew. Towards the end of the term, he had a tendency to panic and race from class to class, skipping out on eating and sleeping as he moved quickly to wrap up the semester in a way that would allow him that much closer to his goal of graduation.

This year, it wasn’t like that at all. April skipped. May dragged. June was peeking around the corner like a shy child, and it wouldn’t come any faster. Peter felt like he was trapped in a bucket of molasses, like every single hour was suddenly ten. He’d attribute it to his June graduation date, his goal being so within reach, but he felt like that was wrong. It wasn’t anticipation that made time multiply. It was something else.

He’d lost all sense of urgency. He’d been racing towards the finish line these last few years. Now, he was barely walking.

It couldn’t be because it was his last year. Peter didn’t have any particular attachment to his undergrad studies—they were an obstacle, if anything. And the only thing new about this year compared to last year was Vanessa, and it didn’t seem quite right to pin this directionlessness on her. Even it was strangely pleasant. Even if he did habitually lose all sense of time around her.

Peter’s phone buzzed. He snapped it up instantly, pressing it between his stomach and his cast. The professor looked out over the class for the culprit before moving back to the lesson. Peter peeked at his phone, seeing a message from MJ.

Peter wasn’t really sure how he felt about MJ. When they were in school together, he’d never known where he stood with her. She was blunt, awkward, smart, and occasionally confrontational. Since then, she seemed to have struck up a strong friendship with Ned, and she even seemed to miss Peter when he was gone. And while Peter was unhappy that a grieving Ned had told her about Spider-Man, she never brought it up.

He’d only seen her twice since then, but they contacted each other at least once or twice a month via text. Nothing deep. Just funny videos and memes. Stressed out over her grad school projects, MJ seemed hellbent on documenting every cat and dog in Cambridge and Boston, and Peter, well… Peter would never say no to more cats and dogs in his life.

This time, though, she’d sent him a video—a video of a video on CNN.

Liz Allan was speaking before Congress.

Suddenly, Peter and his classmates were released. They packed up their backs quickly and headed out. When he was in the hallway, Peter stuck in his earphones to his phone and pushed play.

In the noise, chaos, and movement of the corridor, he only caught about 1 in every 3 words. Liz spoke evenly and persuasively about the negative impact that a proposed funding cut would have on research around a genetic illness—which one, Peter didn’t know. All he knew was that she looked and sounded as good as ever.

Having a supervillain father clearly hadn’t stopped her from excelling. Nor had a lying superhero boyfriend. She moved on. Sometimes, Peter wished he could move on too. Other times, he wondered if he deserved it, this empty feeling, this grief. If it all wasn’t just a roundabout punishment for failing to stop Thanos. After all, how many other people could say they had the Infinity Gauntlet in the palms of their hands before the snap?

Just him and Mr. Stark. At least Mr. Stark had fixed it. What did Peter do?

Literally nothing.

Lost in this train of thought, he stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring down at his phone until the video concluded. Then he flinched, almost dropping it, when it suddenly buzzed against his fingers. Another text, but not from MJ. Instead, it was from Vanessa.

_Free after class? I can meet you in Greenwich Village._

Peter brightened up. He texted her back quickly, suddenly energized after an entire day of lethargy. She texted him an address. He looked it up, mapping out his route. While he wasn’t familiar with the coffee shop, it wasn’t too far away. Back in the day, he could have been there in less than 5 minutes. Nowadays, he needed to take the subway.

So he did. He took a seat next to an old man and another college student, swinging his backpack between his feet. Then Peter looked back down at his phone, scrolling up the long thread of texts between him and Vanessa.

Despite a very bad first impression, they’d gotten very friendly over the last month or so. It started with him offering to follow up with her about the different support groups—which ones were great, which weren’t, which had the best refreshments, etc.

Their conversations quickly devolved into something more social. Peter frequently asked her about her day. She asked him about his. Peter sent her snarky comments about his experiences in college. She sent him even snarkier comments about living in New York.

Then the conversations turned personal. He learned that she worked nights and wasn’t always comfortable with the commute home. She learned about his aunt and his uncle, and the weirdness around his parents’ disappearance. He knew she had a husband she was head over heels for, and she knew he’d screwed up the one romantic relationship he’d ever had by ratting out his girlfriend’s father.

And they both knew that the other was just as fixated on the snap. Just in different ways.

_Sometimes, I feel like I won the lottery by cheating_ , she’d confessed just three nights earlier. _Like I ripped a get-out-of-jail-free card out of the hands of a firefighter or a nurse or superhero. Someone who really matters._

_Sometimes, I’m worried that when I graduate from college, this dead feeling won’t go away,_ he shared last night. _Like I wasted my time chasing this, and nothing’s going to change._

Peter didn’t think he would be at the point of his life yet where he would be weighing the benefit of shared life experiences, but here he was. He couldn’t talk about this stuff to anyone else but Vanessa. No one else understood.

The old man and the college student stood and left at the next stop. When the subway started moving again, Peter’s phone buzzed with an incoming FaceTime message from Ned. Checking to make sure that his earphones were still in and that the microphone piece was near his mouth, Peter picked up. “Hello?”

Ned’s face was too close to the camera. He beamed immediately. “Oh, good! You picked up.” He lifted his phone on his end above his head, showing a longer shot of him walking in a classroom with 7 other guys. “Hey, guys, say hi to Peter!”

“Hi Peter!”

“Yo, Pete!”

“Hey, Petey! Good job serving the car crash!”

Peter was caught off guard. “H-hey,” he said awkwardly. “Uh, having fun?

Seemingly getting Peter’s discomfort, Ned pulled the phone down until it was just him in the frame again. “Man, between the drinking and the parties, it’s a miracle anyone gets anything done around here. Oh! We made a hot dog launcher the other day!”

Ned chatted animatedly about Mark I and Mark II of the launcher—calibration was apparently a struggle—and Peter listened intently. Frequent video calls helped, but he’d missed so much about his best friend already—like when Ned’s hat thing had become a hair thing. He’d been rocking long hair when Peter came back, but that hairstyle had come and gone a long time ago. The Ned of today was both beardless and bald. Peter already knew he’d shaved it off. Ned had sent him _only 73 pictures_ after the last strand hit the floor, after all. It was interesting seeing him live, though. It suited him.

“I’m guessing you heard about Liz,” Peter said in the lull of the conversation.

“Yeah, she did a great job,” Ned said instantly. He ran a hand over his head. “She’s heading back to New York for a couple of days, you know. A bunch of us from AcaDeca were thinking about coming up next week and taking her out for some drinks. You want me to ask if I can invite you?”

Peter had missed more of the Academic Decathlon than he’d sincerely participated in. Hard pass. “No. That- that probably wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Ned frowned at him. “Dude. It’s not like she knows about, you know-” He looked around before saying, in a very quiet voice, “ _Thwip, thwip._ ”

Peter’s ears burned. “It’s okay,” he said evenly. His fingers were starting to shake. “I have some final projects anyway. I need to focus.”

Ned blinked at him, understanding passing over his face. “That’s right, I forget ESU doesn’t release you guys until June.” He grinned at Peter. “Good luck with finals, dude! Not that you need it.”

“Good to see you.”

“You too.”

Peter ended the call and tossed the whole thing—phone included—in his backpack. He stared blindly at through the subway mirror until his stop was finally, finally called.

Liz Allan was going to be in town, huh? Great. What were the chances Adrian Toomes kept his identity a secret once Spider-Man was officially “dead”? The last thing Peter needed right now was another person looking at him and seeing Spider-Man. Ugh.

But hey. Another problem for another day, right?

The coffee shop wasn’t far. Vanessa was exactly where she said she would be—sitting alone on a soft couch by the side window. She turned to him as he approached, licking foam off her lips.

He hurried over, feeling a muscle in his back starting to unclench. “Sorry to make you wait.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re a whopping ten minutes early, Parker.”

Peter was already smiling. “Don’t be mad.”

Vanessa grinned back at him. “I’m fucking furious,” she said, dark eyes gleaming. She moved her legs, making room for him. He sat down.

Today, Vanessa was wearing a jean jacket, a purple gauzy blouse, and black leggings. Simplistically elegant. She leaned over to put her cup on the table, brushing past him, and it felt like the contents of his chest were suddenly being squeezed in a cavity two sizes too small. She sat back, and then Peter could breathe again.

“How was class?” she asked.

Peter relaxed a little bit more and started talking about his day. It was so easy to slip into small talk with her. She was genuinely interested in his coursework and how he was doing, and he really liked hearing about Vanessa’s ongoing adventures of getting lost in New York.

He was starting to feel that molasses feeling again, but it was nice. Like lingering in bed on a weekend when you had nothing to do. Or like watching the sun go down without a care in the world. Or like spending too much time in a coffee shop with a friend.

“So. Peter,” Vanessa said, switching topics. “I have an invasive question for you.”

Peter couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. “Is it really a question if it’s not invasive? Also, I could just not respond.”

Vanessa crossed her legs, leaning in towards him with a smirk. “Oh, but I’m _really_ good at guilt-tripping people who don’t answer my questions,” she purred impishly.

She smelled nice, like a mixture of jasmine and copper.

“I think you missed your calling then. You could have been a journalist. Or a cop. Or a lawyer.”

“And you could have been a politician,” she teased. She poked his shoulder in time with her next three words: “Deflect, deflect, deflect-”

Peter leaned away with a laugh, hands held up defensively. “Sorry, sorry. Go ahead.”

Vanessa stopped leaning against him. “I’ve been going to the support groups you suggested,” she said without preamble. “May have even found one or two to stick with—we’ll see. But they wanted to know where I’d gotten my recommendations… and, boy, were they surprised when they heard _your_ name.”

“Anything they had to say—all lies and slander,” Peter said quickly. “Unless it was good, of course. Then it is 100% true, and they’re probably understating it.”

Vanessa eyed him. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? They didn’t have much to say about you at all. In fact, word is you don’t contribute to any of the conversations.” She put her elbows back on the top of the couch. She looked like a lanky street cat staring down a mouse in a dead-end alley. She had him trapped, and the only thing that was left was for her to decide whether she wanted to eat him or just bat him around a bit.

“So, Peter,” she said slowly, “if you don’t participate, why do you attend support groups in the first place?”

Peter needed to tread lightly with this conversation. Vanessa operated with a level of caution and survival instincts that Peter did not yet understand. Friend or not, he could drive her away so easily with a misplaced word.

“It’s not a creepy thing,” he blurted out. Then he froze, horrified at himself. _Good job, Peter! Aaand this is why you have no friends._

Vanessa’s eyes narrowed. “Defensive?”

“I- maybe. I just-” Peter shifted in his seat awkwardly, squeezing his good hand over his cast. “I really am just there to listen. I-”

Peter cut himself off. _Hard._ On the other side of the couch, Vanessa watched him. Her eyebrows lifted slightly the longer he didn’t say anything. Embarrassing and panicking a little, Peter stared down at his lap. At the slightly swollen fingers peeking out from under his white cast. At the ink smeared over his other hand.  

They’d only known each other for a few weeks, but Peter knew Vanessa’s tolerance of bullshit was very low. It made her very likable, in Peter’s opinion, but it also put him in an awkward position. His default nature was bullshit. Excuses. White lies. Bigger lies. Deflections.

The only thing that worked with Vanessa was the truth, and he couldn’t share all of his truths.

But maybe he could share this one.

Peter shifted in the couch cushion, facing Vanessa resolutely. “I want to know how it works,” he said bluntly. “Billions—trillions—of beings disappeared all across the universe, and each of them had a different experience. So what did they see that I didn’t? What did they _feel_ that I didn’t? What do they know? Everyone has a different piece of the puzzle, and I want to know all of it.” Peter clenched his fists. Vanessa just looked back at him, puzzled. “ _Think about it for a second._ We don’t have the stones, but we do have the experiences, and if we put all of those experiences together, we might be able to develop a better understanding of how it went down in the first place-”

“So you can, what? Stop it from happening next time?”

The simple answer to that, of course, was yes.

But hearing it said out loud, coupled with the sheer disbelief in her voice, felt like a punch to the gut. Peter found himself staring at his hands again.

“…egotistical, huh?” What he was proposing was something that gods and aliens and wizards and the very smartest people in the galaxy couldn’t do. If Tony Stark couldn’t figure it out, then who was Peter Parker to try? His face was starting to burn.  

But he rallied after a moment, pushing his point. “But that’s the promise of science, isn’t it? The thing that confuses and scares us today will be understood and dealt with tomorrow.”

He braved looking up at her again and was surprised at her expression. Somewhere in his explanation, Vanessa had shifted her chin into the heel of her palm. She was smiling at him. She reached out, tugging on his hair slightly, and the tiny drummer in Peter’s chest started rattling his ribcage hopefully.  

“If only everything that scared us could be so easily dealt with,” she said wistfully. Her phone beeped. She picked it up from the table, mouth twisting at what she saw, but dropped it back down again. Her eyes shot back to Peter’s. “I like hearing people’s stories too. Not for the same reason, though. And not the same timeline. I like to hear what happened after they came back.” She looked up at the ceiling musingly, grasping for words. “It makes me feel…”

“Hope?”

The smile Vanessa shot him would have found a comfortable home on a shark. “I guess that’s a word for it. It’s not as nice though. It’s more of a bitchy jealousy thing. _If they can get past this, I can too._ ”

She had a hell of a Cheshire grin, he’d noticed. Equal parts gorgeous and unsettling.

“Still sounds like hope to me,” Peter commented.

Vanessa stood up suddenly. “I don’t just listen to stories. I also gather them.” She looked down at him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Then she reached out a hand to him, smiling faintly. “You won’t share it in support group, but will you share yours with me?”

Peter had learned a lot about Vanessa Wilson in the last couple of weeks. One thing he learned just then?

It was almost impossible for Peter to say no to her—and that was going to become a problem sooner than he’d like.

 

-

 

Vanessa was… nervous. Nervous?

Yeah. Maybe that was what this feeling was.

Peter was maybe the fourth person from New York she’d solicited for a story in all her few years of being here, and the only one so far who wasn’t a friend of a friend of a friend from Boston.

No. Peter was her friend, full stop.

Maybe. She was conflicted about that still. Everything on paper said they shouldn’t have crossed paths, and yet, here they were. Crossing paths. Crossing lives.

Crossing lines.

They went to Central Park. It was, as it had been her first time, annoyingly overcrowded, filled with bustling tourists who acted like they’d never seen trees before. Still, she got some nice test shots of Peter standing in the yellowing grass, looking out over the park with the New York skyline in the background. 

He didn’t pose for it, seemingly buried in his own thoughts. When he did decide to try, the efforts were so bad, it was hilarious. The guy seemed to have no idea what to do his elbows. Or his face.

Playfully, Vanessa ribbed him, giving him a hard time for it. She kept all of the photos, even the really, really bad ones, then swore, deadpan, that worst of them was actually the best, and he’d just have to settle for her using that one from now until the end of time.

Peter’s embarrassed panic was a thing of beauty, and she found herself playing a bustling game of keep-away with her own camera.

At some point, they found a spot away from everyone else. Peter graciously took off his flannel shirt and spread it out as a blanket for them to sit on. Cast aside, Peter had decent biceps for a college nerd—she told him so. He laughed nervously and cracked a joke about textbooks and lab equipment. Then he clapped his hands together.

“So. How does this work?”

“First, let me give you some context,” she said, then promptly shoved him on his back. He yelped. Hilarious.

Not giving him time to backpedal, she laid down next to him and showed him the screen on the camera. She went back through the photos and shared the stories she’d collected so far—Tina’s life-changing swan-dive in an empty pool. Emmanuel’s unexpected skid across a freeway without his beloved motorbike. Dave’s impromptu swim in shark-infested waters. Rachel’s horrifying fall from a missing helicopter.

As she retold and paraphrased the stories given to her, Vanessa started to become more and more aware that Peter was a highly unusual subject for her. Vanessa tended to gravitate towards people who looked like they’d been through hell because of the Infinity Affair. People who wore their damage on the outside.

But for Peter, a clean-cut, relatively put together college student, well… Peter was more like Vanessa than any of them. The damage was on the inside. She saw mostly in his eyes. The sadness and exhaustion swept over him sometimes. The lifelessness that seemed to creep in if he was allowed to sink into his own thoughts too often.

Peter and Vanessa couldn’t have been more different. But in this, she saw so much of herself in him, it hurt.

Vanessa’s grip tightened on the camera. If she was at all consistent, she should have wanted to catch that in her pictures—the pain, the angst. But she didn’t want to capture any of that. She would have rather captured him when he was shining and talking about saving the universe. It was a selfish thing.

Vanessa was okay with being selfish most times. But Peter had a tendency of making her want to be a better version of herself.

“…I take some photos, then we just sit talk through the story. That’s it. That’s the process,” she said, weirdly jittery. “The ball’s in your court now, college boy. So. What’s your story?”

He had relaxed when she recited the stories, a warm pressure that radiated even through her jacket. But now the shoulder she was half laying on suddenly was as hard as concrete.

And that’s where it all went downhill.

“My story,” Peter mumbled. “Mine. I, uh. See, the thing is-” He sat up abruptly, dislodging her. He ran a hand over the top of his hair. “I was… on the bus, going to the MoMA for a field trip. And then we saw the ship, and Ned- there was a… Um. _Wait._ ”

He stood up. It didn’t get any better. By the time Vanessa realized what was happening, Peter had started three different times and changed his story twice. For the longest time, Vanessa just listened, wondering what the hell he was doing and trying to absorb her own feelings in the process.

She was… weirdly hurt? And feeling a little raw and exposed. She didn’t realize how vulnerable her little side project made her until she ran into someone who _didn’t take it as seriously as she did_.

“Ugh. Forget it.” She stood, brushing grass off her leggings.

“Vanessa!” Peter pivoted on her. “Some of the details are, um, a little murky. Can I write it up and send it to you instead?”

Packing away her camera, she shot him a death stare. “What, so you can get your facts straight?” she barked. He flinched. “You’re lying. Either you don’t remember, which I doubt, or you’re lying, which I won’t stand.”

“I don’t- I _do_ remember. I remember more than other people,” Peter snapped back, visibly frustrated.

“Do you?” Vanessa taunted meanly. Then she reconsidered him. “Do you.”

She considered her options. There was no way to gracefully storm out of Central Park. She knew this. In front of her, Peter The Friend and Peter The Liar were both present, and it was so hard to assimilate them. And then, at the same time, he’d given her one little nugget of something to chew on, one little sliver of information that so few people would have even picked up on.

She really needed him to be the friend right now, not the liar. For her own sanity.

“You overdosed. Recently. Did you- was there-” Vanessa sucked in a huge breath, blinked rapidly. She tried again. “Did you remember anything during that? Anything between being dusted and coming back?”

Peter stared back at her silently, eyes wide. Something twisted hard in her chest.

Upset, Vanessa turned away. “Forget it.”

She was embracing the moody exit after all. Whatever.

“It was gold everywhere, wasn’t it?”

She stopped. Turned.

He didn’t notice. He was looking in the middle distance. “It was in the water too. The water was… everywhere, and, on the horizon, there were these structures… some alien, some not-”

“There was something in the sky too,” she tested brusquely, impatiently. “Benevolent.”

“No,” Peter said immediately, frowning. “Not benevolent. I remember-” He looked up at their normal blue sky. Then he cocked his head sharply. “I remember… it chose people. Right? It chose them. So many people from so many places, plucked from the crowds of us, but I think… I think those people didn’t come back.” He dragged his eyes back to her slowly, troubled. “You remember that too?”

Peter looked so miserable and small all of a sudden. Vanessa had a knot in her throat. So she dropped her camera bag and hugged him, burying her face in his shoulder.   

She let out a long, gusty sigh.

Okay. _Okay._ Maybe he was lying about something, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t already taken the measure of this man. She knew who he was.

He was kind. Smart. Funny. Audacious. Awkward. Forgiving.

And really, really goddamn protective of people. She should have predicted this.

“Tell me the truth,” Vanessa said, having a feeling she knew where this was going. “Why can’t you share your story?”

He pulled away from her. “Because it’s not just mine,” he said, confirming her suspicions immediately. His hands curled around hers. His eyes were apologetic, pleading. “If I told you the truth, I’d get a lot of people in trouble. The truth of it is that I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, in a place I should have never been, and I wasn’t alone. I thought I could cut their part of the story out, but-”

“Fair enough,” Vanessa interrupted magnanimously.

Mentally, she wasn’t so accepting.

Mentally, she was _dying_ , chomping at the bit. She wanted to know so badly! What the hell could a straight-laced, goodie-goodie like Peter do that was so bad that he couldn’t talk about it to a friend? If Peter was expected to be judged by her, he was barking up the wrong tree.

God, she bet it was something drug-related. Peter seemed like the type to get his panties in a twist over puffing a joint.

Or maybe it was underage drinking? Joyriding? Vandalism? A little B&E? Stealing and selling answer keys to college exams?

Inwardly, she was cackling. She’d bet good money that whatever he did had nothing on 99% of Vanessa’s life choices. Maybe one day, he’d believe her when she told him that. He thought way, way too fucking highly of her right now.

“Thanks for being honest,” she said, trying hard to keep her thoughts off her face. Judging by his expression, she wasn’t totally successful. Freeing a helpless smirk, she pulled a leaf out of his hair. “Of course, I’d be happier if you were more honest with me in the future.”

Peter still looked miserable. “How so?”

Vanessa gave it some thought. “Don’t say yes all the time,” she said. “You’re too nice. Next time I make you feel uncomfortable, tell me to fuck off.”

Peter sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Vanessa…”

“It doesn’t help people,” she interrupted abruptly, her amusement dying. Honesty for honesty. One more chip in the monument to Peter’s overly high opinion of her. “My stories. Right now, they’re just- they’re just for me.” And she hoarded them like a motherfucker.

Peter hesitated. Then, gently, he said, “That’s where it started. It doesn’t have to be where it ends.”

“What makes you think I’ll share them with others?” she challenged, raising her eyebrows at him.

Peter watched her, then offered a careful smile. “You already shared them with me.”

Vanessa blinked. “Well, shit. Touché.”

Peter continued to smile hesitantly back at her. Then he palmed his nape, eyes casting to the floor. Wade did that too when he was nervous—or playing at it. Every time his hazel eyes swung back up to her, they’d be filled with mirth and mischief, no matter the topic of conversation. Wade was a perpetual class clown, always finding something in the universe to laugh at.

But Peter’s eyes were darker in color but also almost painfully earnest. Consistently _sweet_ , despite everything, lacking the jadedness that both Wade and Vanessa dealt with in spades. It was enough to make her want to break out in spikes, grow fangs, and fucking _annihilate_ anything negative that sauntered into Peter’s life.

Thank god he’d run into her instead of some other knife-happy woman. He’d be eaten alive by anyone else. She nodded to herself twice, assured of this.

“One last thing,” Vanessa said, drawing it out darkly like a prick. Peter straightened to his full height at the tone of her voice, shoulders squaring. She debated letting him suffer a bit, but relented, extending her palm out to him. “Your cast. Give it to me. It’s driving me nuts.”

It had been almost a full month by now. If no one was going to mark it up with their own well wishes, she sure as hell was going to stake her claim on that territory. Fuck them.


End file.
